


Pretend With Me, Darling (Pretend Until Something Shifts in You)

by alexygalaxy



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: (none of the uses are in a sexual context), Angst with a Happy Ending, Ballroom Dancing, F/M, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Mutual Pining, Party, Undercover as a Couple, spoilers thru c2e99, this fic is rated teen for a collective 69 nice uses of the words penis and pussy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:41:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25684435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexygalaxy/pseuds/alexygalaxy
Summary: The Mighty Nein need information on the  Cerberus Assembly before they launch an infiltration attempt to get back the second beacon, and as luck would have it, an alumnus of the Soltryce Academy is throwing a huge ball for wizards from across the Zemni Fields.Caleb and Jester have been nominated to attend, under cover, as a couple. It's totally going to be a focused and productive mission. It will not awaken Anything in either of them.
Relationships: Jester Lavorre/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 48
Kudos: 129





	1. chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [celebreultimaverba](https://archiveofourown.org/users/celebreultimaverba/gifts).



> Going into this fic, I need you all to know several things.
> 
> 1\. Yes, the acronym for the subtitle spells PUSSY. This is intentional because
> 
> 2\. On January 28, 2019, one of my dearest friends in the world sent a discord message that read "alright everyone: polynein fake dating. they go into diff Empire Functions when they finally yknow acknowledge the war and they decide who's fake dating by the skills they need." which was shortly followed by "jester/caleb teamed up and were kicked out because they started playing the penis game". 
> 
> Then, she said "but penis is too easy ..... they just keep saying dirtier and dirtier words until caleb says something in zemnian so dirty that it makes some zemnian beaurecrat gasp so loudly the entire crowd goes silent and you can hear a champagne glass shatter".
> 
> Then, i said, "i immediately pictured caleb just screaming PUSSY at the top of his lungs in the middle of the dance floor thank you so much"
> 
> And one year, six months, and six days later. I have completed what is and always will be "the pussy fic" in my mind.
> 
> 3\. Please keep in mind that at the heart of all the romance and angst, this is in fact a crack fic I made because my friend thought it was funny. you all can have it but like. its for morgan. and if you are morgan. i love you and thank you for waiting so long.
> 
> That is all, and please, enjoy!

Caleb pulled absentmindedly at the collar of his jacket as he walked. It was odd that it bothered him, given that he was usually draped in a scarf and coat much heavier than this. He supposed it was something about the stiffness of the material and the fact that he couldn’t fully turn his head to check over his shoulder that was unnerving him.

“Stop picking at it,” Jester scolded. “You’ll stick out if you look so uncomfortable. I saw a  _ lot _ of rich people when I was still with my Mama, and none of them ever messed with their outfits.”

“Fine,” Caleb said. “I will try. But I am not actually rich and I am always uncomfortable, so I make  _ no _ guarantees.”

Jester scowled at Caleb’s half-promise. “Besides,” she added, her voice pitching down so slightly Caleb wondered if he imagined it, “you look very handsome in that suit right now. Green is a good color on you, even in disguise. Don’t go messing it up.” She tapped her fingers up the buttons with each word of the last sentence before flicking his nose lightly.

Caleb cleared his throat, blinking a few times more than necessary. “Thank you, Jester. You look quite wonderful as well.”

“Don’t I?” she giggled, stepping away from Caleb to give room for her skirt as she twirled. 

Her dress was a pale peach satin, embroidered with gold flowers across the fitted bodice. It was sleeveless, save for the circles of tulle that draped over her upper arms, attaching at her sternum and again in the back against her spine. The skirt puffed out from her hips, its several layers causing it to stand a ways out from her body. It was long enough to cover Jester’s feet, even with heels adding two inches to her normal height. It was solid pink, and would shimmer if there were more light in the street. As Jester span, the hem lifted a few inches, billowing in a wide circle around her calves. 

Caleb smiled, giving her a small hum which meant “Ja, you do.” 

Jester stopped, letting the dress swirl back around her ankles as Caleb caught up to her, holding out an arm for her to take. 

“What?” he addressed Jester’s incredulous expression. “We are married tonight. We can afford a little intimacy.” 

Jester’s mouth melted from confused frown to devilish grin. “Oh, Caleb,” she drawled overdramatically before slipping her hand around the crook of his elbow, “what a chivalrous husband you are.”

Caleb rolled his eyes, but made no attempt to hide his smile as they began to walk, now nearing the party they were planning to infiltrate. Some rich fellow from Rexxentrum had made a hefty donation to the Soltryce Academy, and a ball was being held in his honor. Who this man was neither of them knew nor cared to know, since they were here for a more morally ambiguous purpose. 

A large amount of high ranking wizards, including Cerberus Assembly members, were expected to attend as guests, and the Mighty Nein had decided that eavesdropping on a room of high stakes magic users whose headquarters they were about to infiltrate was worth the risk in order to gain any kind of information. Jester had also promised to snag any kind of letters or personal artifacts if she didn’t think it would cause a disturbance. It was the kind of mission that set Caleb on edge, as there was no concrete goal in mind, not to mention the fact that Ikithon was highly likely to be present. Yet, knowing the customs of the area, he figured he would best play the part of a local invitee. Jester, having the most knowledge of upper class functions, was deemed most suitable to go with him.

Music faded into their consciousnesses as they approached the brightly lit building. Other couples entered their periphery, all heading towards the guarded gates of an upscale manor. Caleb’s steps faltered, and Jester instinctively squeezed his arm in reassurance. 

“I’m here, Caleb,” she whispered, her tone far more serious than it had been just a few minutes earlier. “I’m not going to leave your side.” 

Caleb simply began to walk forward again, arm noticeably tenser than before. He took his free hand and reached into an inner pocket of his jacket, drawing out the invitation Jester had forged for them. Jester glanced at it and snickered. Caleb’s gaze dropped towards her, eyebrows furrowed and lips curled up, a mix of disapproving and amused.

“I should not have let you design the wax seal.”

“No one’s going to  _ notice _ that it’s a dick,” Jester answered indignantly.

Caleb huffed and let his eyes flit back to the guard. “Let’s hope you are right.”

The man held his hand out in anticipation, and Caleb dropped the invitation into it. He glanced it over quickly, asserting that the two of them were invited guests and checking the signature of Mr. What’shisface whose house they were now entering (which Jester had mimicked fairly convincingly) before gesturing them in.

“Sir and Madam Albrecht, right this way,” he directed, a light Zemnian accent haunting his words. Caleb gave him a nod of thanks before Jester’s grip on his arm tugged him forward into the party.

It was loud - visually, audibly, and also smell-wise. Partygoers in lavish dresses and suits milled about a ballroom composed almost entirely of pale grey marble. Small chandeliers hung from the ceiling every ten or so feet, leaving the main floor well lit, but the outskirts shadowed. The walls to their left and right held floor to ceiling stained glass windows, depicting various gods and creatures; a display of the kind of gaudiness that all rich men possess. In front of the windows, on both sides of the room, were tables of food and drink. Wine, beer, liquor, and various fruity concoctions were laid out in bowls and bottles, with servants standing nearby to pour them into glasses. Plates were laden with meats and cheeses and bread, fruits and berries, and - 

“Pastriesssssssss,” hissed Jester. Caleb didn’t need to look down to see her eyes going wide as he let himself be dragged towards the nearest table, which was heaping with cakes and tarts. 

Jester’s hand let go of Caleb as they neared the table and she began reaching for the piles of sweets, ignoring the waiter and choosing to grab them all herself. 

“Oh my gosh, there are so many desserts here, this is going to be such a good night! This one looks good, and so does that, and I think there’s some raspberry in these, and …” Jester babbled, arms quickly filling with baked goods. Caleb leaned to the waiter and whispered something to him before tapping Jester’s shoulder. 

“Those ones,” he said, pointing to a pile of flat pastries, twisted into the shape of a heart with dark brown streaks in between layers, “have cinnamon in them. I know you like that.”

Jester inhaled excitedly before snatching eight or so of them up. 

“Open your pockets, Caleb!” she said, tugging fervently at the side of Caleb’s jacket. 

“Shh, shh,” Caleb hushed her nervously. “Don’t draw so much attention. No names unless you have to, and also  _ what do you need my pockets for?” _

“Um, to put the pastries in? For later? I can’t eat  _ all  _ of this at once and my dress is stupid and doesn’t have any,” Jester explained, packing her various desserts into the side pocket Caleb was now holding open. “And it’s  _ fine _ if we say names. I like calling you Caleb, so I’m going to call you Caleb. No one here knows who Caleb Widogast is anyways, that was the  _ whole point _ of changing your name and ALSO rich people never listen to anyone except themselves.”

Caleb glanced about, eyes darting like a frightened animal, looking to see if anyone had caught wind of their conversation. Jester placed her hand reassuringly on his shoulder.

“No one’s noticed. I told you. You can say anything around rich people and they won’t even care.”

“I am sure you could not say  _ anything, _ Jester.”

“Watch me, Cay-leb,” Jester said, in her signature sure-fire fashion. “Penis.”

“Excuse me?”

“Penis. Penis Penis Penis.” Jester paused and gestured to the lack of excitement around her. “I told you, Caleb. No one noticed.”

Caleb sighed. “Ja, ok. You were right _. _ ” he admitted. “But can you still cool it on the names?”

“Sorry.”

“No, no. It is fine. I am just, uh, a little tense with … that man possibly here.” Caleb’s eyes began to scan the room again, his left hand drifting up to press the amulet hidden beneath his shirt. 

“Of course. I understand.” Jester paused for a second before breaking the heavy atmosphere with a waggle of her eyebrows and a breathy, “Mister Albrecht.” 

Caleb couldn’t help but laugh. Jester had a way of doing that to him, making him smile in situations that called for the exact opposite. He was never sure whether to feel confused or grateful for it. Tonight, he was leaning more towards grateful. 

“Well, Miss Albrecht,” Caleb started, matching Jester’s wispy tone, “we have some eavesdropping to do.” He held out his arm to her and she slipped her hand through, leaving traces of powdered sugar along Caleb’s jacket as she found a comfortable grip on him. 

As Caleb began to move out into the room, Jester pressed close to him, presumably so they wouldn’t get separated, even though the ballroom wasn’t very crowded yet. They took a wide lap around the main floor, keeping an eye out for any particularly useful looking guests and trusting Jester to do the same. 

While they walked, the musicians struck up the first song of the night, causing a rush to the dance floor. A handful of small groups were left standing about, mostly milling near the food and drink tables or lost in conversation on the outskirts of the main area. Most of the guests that night were human, with a few half and full elves as well as halflings scattered among the mix. 

Getting her first full scan of the room, Jester was glad she had opted for her human disguised form, otherwise she would have stuck out like a sore thumb. Which, normally, she didn’t mind. But tonight she had to be extra sneaky, and she also would have felt bad drawing even more unwanted attention to Caleb. He was already freaked out enough about the night. Having to walk around with, like, a lady tortle all night might’ve actually killed him, even though it would have been  _ super _ fun. 

“Hey, over there,” Caleb murmured, jerking his elbow to their right at a small crowd of about six people, huddling in front of one of the stained glass windows. They were crowded around each other, leaning forwards as someone in the center held their hand out, a gigantic gemstone glittering in it. They turned it, letting it catch the light, and then suddenly it was gone and the group broke out into hushed gasps and excited claps. 

Caleb also let out a soft, “oh!” as he witnessed the destruction of the illusory gem. The sight had confirmed a couple things for him. One, there were definitely no restrictions on magic at this party. It was full of rich wizards who wanted to do nothing but show off to their friends and brag to their rivals. Two, whoever made that gemstone was a highly trained illusion wizard. To create an image that could reflect light as seamlessly as the gem had was no small feat. Hours had been spent perfecting that as well as many other, possibly more dangerous, spells. 

A younger voice began shouting in the back of Caleb’s mind, telling him to get OUT of this place full of powerful magic users, he’d be safer in the shadows. He could  _ not _ do that, he reminded himself. He had a goal to accomplish for the sake of his  _ friends _ , which required him to stay in this ballroom. And, he had Jester beside him to get him through the night. 

“Wooooooah,” she said, practically on cue, and grabbed at Caleb’s arm in surprise. “That was pretty impressive.”

“Ja. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Penis lets go spy on them?”

Caleb’s eyebrows scrunched into their familiar, utterly confused position. “I - sorry, what?”

“I said penis let’s go spy on them.”

“I heard you. I was questioning your use of the word ‘penis’.”

“Oh!,” Jester said, head cocking slightly sideways. “That’s our code word. We’ll just say penis before we say anything super important so we know no one is listening.”

“Don’t you think saying that will make everyone pay  _ more _ attention to us?”

“Has it so far?”

“Well, no, but - ” Caleb started.

“There you go then!” Jester returned, very matter-of-factly. “We say penis, and then if no one makes a weird face or anything we’re clear to talk about the mission.”

“I … am not going to say that all night,” he said, head shaking incredulously as he stared down at Jester.

Jester pouted, trying to cross her arms without unlinking elbows with Caleb. “Why not? Code words are good ideas.”

“That is true, but you could have picked from a lot of different code words.”

“Yeah, but penis is hilarious.”

Caleb opted not to respond. 

“You know I’m right, Caleb,” Jester said, prodding a finger into Caleb’s shoulder to accentuate her point. And he did, the smile which had slowly crept across his face gave as much away, but he’d be damned if he admitted so out loud.

“We should go check them out,” Caleb prompted, shifting his weight in the direction of the crowd and hoping Jester would pick up the hint.

“Penis ok,” Jester responded, following Caleb’s movement.

“That wasn’t even important mission talk,” Caleb observed, faux exasperation in his voice.

“No.” Jester smirked up at him. “That time it was just for fun.”

Caleb spared a few seconds to simply smile at her before steeling himself to talk to their first target of the night.

  
  



	2. chapter 2

“Pardon me,” Caleb began, approaching the gem man with a look of curiosity, “I couldn’t help but notice that _wonderful_ display you just put on. Quite remarkable. I can’t imagine the kind of training something like that must take.”

The gem man looked up with a start, taking in the lanky, almost snobbish-looking black haired man and stout, pleasant woman who had appeared in front of him. “Oh, thank you, thank you! It’s quite a fun trick, wouldn’t ya say, Mr. …”

“Albrecht,” Caleb said, extending a hand. “Oscar Albrecht. And this lovely woman is my wife Guinevere.” Jester let out the smallest of giggles and Caleb wondered why again he let her name their spy personas after the couple from Tusk Love. (Because she had asked, huge grin on her face, hands clasped in excitement, puppy dog eyes to shame Nugget’s, and who did he think he was to deny her anything.)

“Pleasure to meet you both,” the man said, grasping first Caleb, then Jester’s hands in both of his own. “I myself am Aldir Braubeck.”

“The pleasure is mine, Herr Braubeck, to play witness to your display of arcane talent.”

“Oh, it’s just an old party trick,” Aldir answered, waving his hands noncommittally. 

“Party trick or no, it was quite wonderful. Are you self taught?”

“Oh, no,” Aldir said. “I was a student of the arcane, years and years ago. Trained as a wizard with hopes of joining the Assembly someday. Never made it there though. Ha! Things fell through when I got married, didn’t have time for a family and my studies. Ended up dropping out and falling out of practice.This is one of the few things that hasn’t gotten rusty over the years.”

“Ah, I see.” Caleb nodded resolutely. “An unfortunate occurrence. You were training in the school of Illusion, then?”

“Well, it is what it is, as they say. And yes, I was! Keen mind you got there, young man. I take it you have some familiarity with the arcane arts as well, then?”

“Ah,” Caleb began, pulse quickening as he tried to decide how much truth was safe to admit. 

“We both do!” Jester, sensing Caleb’s fear starting to form, drew the conversation to herself, allowing his mind to rest slightly. “I’ve got a party trick too, actually. Do you wanna see it?”

Caleb’s anxiety returned almost as quick as it had vanished, as he felt Jester’s arm unlink from his and heard her whispering under her breath an incantation he really did not want to see the results of tonight. He reached for her hands, which were on their way to flying outwards, causing her to (thankfully) startle and drop the spell as he enveloped them with his own. He squeezed one hand gently as a sign of good will as he leaned over to murmur in her ear. 

“These windows are worth more than your mother makes in a year, maybe save Thaumaturgy for later, ja?” 

Jester crinkled her nose at him in disappointment, but her eyes betrayed no hard feelings.

Aldir slapped his leg and chuckled heartily besides them before addressing Caleb as if Jester wasn’t also in earshot. “A troublemaker, huh? Bold choice. Good luck with that.”

Caleb turned his gaze back to Aldir, already stern disguised face growing even harder and voice dropping to a more serious register as he slid a protective arm about Jester’s waist, his other hand clenching defensively around hers. “She is an extremely smart, talented, and capable magic user. I sincerely value her judgement, and I am _very_ happy with my choices, Herr Braubeck. Now, if you’ll excuse us.”

He tugged on Jester’s waist to turn her away, moving into the slowly dispersing crowd who had been watching Aldir’s illusory tricks. He let go of the hand he had been gripping, and leaned down to give a whisper in her ear. 

“He was rude.”

“Oh my gosh, I know, right?” Jester turned over her shoulder to stick her tongue at Aldir, who had already started talking to someone else. “Plus he never even graduated the school.”

“Ja. Rude _and_ useless.”

“Penis definitely.” 

As she finished speaking, Jester settled into Caleb’s side, head leaning lazily onto his shoulder, arm stacking atop the one he still had wrapped around her. She tapped on his knuckles in time with the music, and all of a sudden Caleb had to focus _very_ hard on the floor where he was walking and absolutely nothing else. He was focusing so hard, in fact, that he nearly missed the unfamiliar voice addressing him.

“I see you two met old Aldir?” 

The voice came from a source directly behind and almost uncomfortably close to Caleb’s head. He attempted to turn around and search for it, forgetting both that his suit was too stiff to twist easily and also that he was still holding onto Jester, causing chuckles from another unseen source as he wriggled like a held cat for a moment before dropping his grip on Jester to fully spin about. 

The source of the voices was a pair of lavishly dressed women; one a dark-skinned human and the other a bronze-skinned half-elf. They both had long white hair, which had been twisted and curled into extravagant matching updos, though the human’s hair appeared to be white from age while the elf was just extremely blonde. The human wore a navy satin suit, the exact same shade as the base tone of the elf’s gold-trimmed, high necked ball gown. They stood, arm in arm, somehow looking down at Caleb despite both being shorter than him. 

“S - sorry, what?” Caleb stammered, now facing the women who had called out to him.

The human let out a deep, quiet laugh before extending her free hand to Caleb.

“Hanne, Hanne Moonstriker,” she said, grabbing Caleb’s hand and shaking it firmly. “This is my wife Siona. We know Aldir, somewhat unfortunately, and it seems you two know him now, too.”

“Yes, we do, and he really kind of sucks.” Jester reached for Hanne’s hand first, and then Siona’s, shaking them both enthusiastically. “Well, hello, I’m Guinevere, pleasure to meet you, he’s Oscar, sorry he’s being so awkward, and we - I told you to stop picking at it!”

Caleb had begun pulling at his jacket again, trying to straighten it out after his semi-manic twisting. Jester, tutting slightly, placed her hands over his and gently lifted his fingers off of his coat. Keeping one of her hands wrapped around his, she used the other to smooth folds in the fabric. 

“There.” She gave a final pat to his chest. “Handsome as ever.” 

Caleb could barely hide his blush, though it occurred to him that of all the times to not be able to hide a blush, now was probably the most appropriate, and opted to let it cover his face. All that thinking caused his mouth to twist into a weird half-scowl, which in turn caused Jester to giggle, and Caleb’s blush to grow even deeper as the noise drew his gaze down to her face, which was split with a grin.

“Young love,” Siona commented dryly.

“Oh, leave them be, Si, you were just as bad once,” Hanne teased. “I think it’s sweet.”

“Thank you,” Jester said, somehow causing Caleb to turn even _more_ red. 

“How long have you two been together anyways?” Hanne asked.

  
“Two years,” Caleb answered.

“Three-ish years,” Jester said at the exact same time.

Their eyes met for a panicked second before Caleb began sputtering a coverup that he hoped was not obviously one. “Ah, well, we have been _together_ two years, but we met about three years ago now -”

“In Nicodranas!” Jester added, slipping into the deception as smoothly as her hands slipped around Caleb’s waist. She smiled up at him before turning back to Hanne and Siona with a grin and added in a false whisper, “That’s where I’m from.”

  
  
“The accent does give it away,” Hanne admitted.

“What was a Zemnian like you doing down in Nicodranas?” Siona sat in her hip as she eyed Caleb. Her gaze was not aggressive, but did have a sense of trying to fit two puzzle pieces together which didn’t really look like they matched. It was a look Caleb often saw on Beauregard’s face. 

“Studying,” he replied curtly. He took a second to think, short enough that it could be passed off as indignance at Siona’s nosiness. “There is a rather accomplished mage who has set his tower up in the center of Nicodranas. I had been directed there after graduating from the Academy for a more, ah, in-depth tutelage.”

Siona nodded, apparently satisfied with such an answer. 

“He stayed in my Mama’s hotel while he was studying, that’s how we met!” Jester added. “Oh, by the way, my Mama owns a hotel.”

Caleb tensed at that. “Guin, liebling, I don’t think all these details are really necessary,” he said, praying that Jester would pick up on the rather unsubtle hint to stop giving away tidbits that could be easily traced back to their actual identities. 

“Shh,” she said, pressing a finger to his lips. “ _I’m_ telling the story now.”

“Okay,” he mumbled before Jester pulled the finger away.

“ _Anyways_ ,” she drawled, turning back to Hanne and Siona, “he was staying in my Mama’s hotel and I would see him around there all the time, when he wasn’t too busy studying, which was kind of a lot honestly, he really likes books. Like _really_ really likes books.” She paused. “It’s kind of cute how much he likes them, actually.”

Caleb’s eyebrows jumped ever so slightly.

“Okay, but, so. He was living in my Mama’s hotel and at first I would just see him in the library, and it was like, ooh that cute guy is in here studying again but I probably shouldn’t bother him, but also I want to get to know him. And then after a while we started chatting a little bit and then we started hanging out more, and then we would like, talk every day and have meals together and stuff for like a year before we started actually dating. And you know we would also go around town and go shopping for stuff sometimes, like he helped me pick out dresses this one time and -”

“How’d you two end up back in the Empire?” Siona asked, cutting Jester off.

“Oh, well, you know, Oscar said he wanted to raise our kids in the same place he was raised,” Jester said, drawing Caleb closer at the mention of their fictional family, “and so we headed back up here to get a house and everything ready before, you know …” 

Caleb had stopped processing absolutely any auditory input after hearing Jester’s voice utter the words “our kids”. Thankfully, she squeezed his side as she trailed off, drawing him back to reality in time to catch the women’s comments.

“Oh, you guys are thinking of starting a family, that is so sweet,” Hanne cooed.

At the same time, Siona’s eyebrows arched, and she said, “Damn, you two are _serious_ serious, huh?”

“Are you married, then?” They asked in unison.

Jester simply grinned at them and drew even further into Caleb's side, signaling him to take over talking once more. 

"Yes, ah, we were married rather recently," he said, rubbing his hand absentmindedly over Jester's shoulder, suppressing the thought to _pull away, Widogast, that’s too much_ because Oscar wouldn’t feel weird about hugging his wife, Guineviere.

“Oh, how wonderful,” Hanne said, reaching an expectant hand towards Jester. “May I see your ring?”

Jester’s eyes went wide as she realized she had forgotten to add a ring to Guineviere’s visual enchantment. “Well, uh, I don’t actually have it,” she started, rubbing her finger ashamedly as she looked down, pretending to be embarrassed and hoping her lie would be harder to identify. “It got … stolen?”

“Stolen?” Siona echoed. “Like someone swiped it off your hand? Or did you get mugged?”

“Yes, yes,” Jester rushed, latching onto the prompt Siona had given her. She pulled away from Caleb so that she could gesture dramatically with both hands as she talked. “It was taken by _bandits_.”

“Bandits? In Rexxentrum?”

“No, no, while Oscar and I were travelling up here. We couldn’t afford any kind of guard or anything and we figured since we both do a little magic we’d be safe, but some bandits snuck up on us right when we were setting up for bed. It was, like, really scary” She looked back up, eyes gleaming as she settled into a rhythm for the tale she was weaving.

“I was like rolling out our bedrolls and everything,” she continued, “and I wasn’t really paying attention, and Oscar was in the middle of setting his alarm spell so he was busy too, right? And then all of a sudden we hear this noise, and it was like, oh my gosh what is _that_ , but before we could even figure it out we saw like six bandits come out of the shadows and they all had these big crossbows, it was so scary, right Oscar?”

Caleb nodded silently, entirely unsure where this story was going and not wanting to throw a wrench in anything.

“Yeah, so then one of them was all like, ‘Put your hands up or we’ll stab you’ and there were so many of them we didn’t think we could win without getting hurt, so we did, and then the guy was like ‘Give us all your money’ and we were like ‘we don’t have any money’ and he was like ‘well give us something’ and I was like ‘well I have this ring’, and he was like, ‘let me see it’, so I took it off, and THEN while all the bandits were looking at it to see if it was worth anything, Oscar was like, ‘back me up’ and then he made a wall of fire between us and them, and oh my gosh, it was so heroic, like you guys don’t even KNOW! And if I’m being honest, it was also pretty hot -”

“Guin -” Caleb started.

“I’m complimenting you, shut up.”

Siona and Hanne shared a look and a chuckle.

“Aaaanyways, Oscar was like _wooooosh_ and the flames went up, but these were really really mean bandits, and instead of just running away they started shooting at us through the fire, and we had to fight them off and Oscar was so brave and strong casting all these spells to scare them off, and eventually they ran away and left us alone but they took my ring with them, and now I don’t have it. So that’s what happened, right, love?”

“J-ja, it is,” Caleb stuttered out. “But ah, Guin, dear, don’t sell yourself short. You did most of the heavy lifting in that fight. I just shot some magic missiles, but I saw you knock one of them nearly unconscious with one hit from your lollipop.”

“Lollipop?” Siona questioned.

“Well, you know, I’m not going to summon it ‘cause we’re in a party and all, but I have a magic lollipop that I can beat people up with,” Jester explained.

“And if I’m being honest,” Caleb said, smirking slightly, desire to add to the tale momentarily outweighing nervousness, “it’s pretty hot.”

Jester looked at the floor, suddenly bashful. 

Siona rolled her eyes.

“Well, that’s unfortunate that it got stolen,” Hanne said, breaking the weird tension that had started to build in the air. “But I’m curious now, you all seem to have such wild lives, what did you do to propose?”

Jester and Caleb began to protest in unison. “Oh, nein,” - “Nononono,” - “we are not that interesting” - “yeah we’re really boring actually” - “that was a one-off” - “we don’t, like, go around hunting monsters for fun or anything.”

“Well, I still want to hear it,” Hanne said.

“You tell this one, Oscar.” Jester gave a small smile as she grabbed his hand again.

“Ah, well,” Caleb began, unsure of where to take this, “I had bought a ring, but I didn’t know exactly how I was going to propose, and I am a very meticulous man, so I had been waiting and trying to figure out something good.”

Jester swung his hand back and forth in hers slowly as he talked. The rhythm was oddly soothing, like the wash of the sea outside of the Lavish Chateau. It was a beautiful beach there, Caleb had loved it the few times they’d visited. And it was Jester’s home, too, she clearly loved it there. That’d be a good place to propose. Not that he’d ever be in a position to propose to her, and _not_ that he’d ever thought about it before, but, for the sake of the story.

“Guin is from Nicodranas, right by the ocean, and ah, there is a little spot on the beach that we would go a lot, at night, when the stars were out. And ah, I just so happened to have the ring on me. We were sitting together, and she saw a crab run into the water and she got up to chase after it, and she went in, in her clothes and everything. I just looked at her, laughing in the waves, with the stars on her, and I thought, ‘well, I could stare at that for the rest of my life’. And I suppose she’s rubbed off on me, because I threw out all the plans I had been making and I just took the ring out and waited for her to turn back around.” As he finished speaking, Caleb lifted Jester’s hand to his mouth and pressed a small kiss to the spot where an engagement ring might be, before letting their hands fall once again.

“Alright, that’s pretty sweet,” Siona admitted, and Hanne nodded in agreement.

Jester simply squeezed his hand and looked up at him with an incredibly soft smile, and an even softer voice. “It was _very_ romantic.” She paused, for just a second, before shooting back into her normal bright tone. “And you, know, obviously I said, yes, ‘cause we’re married now.”

“Well why’d you say yes?" Siona asked. “How’d you know?”

“Oh! Well, I mean, there’s a _lot_ of reasons, you know. Like, Oscar’s really smart, and really dedicated, and he spends forever poring over his books and he’s very very careful with them, all the time. But like, even with all the time he spends, he’s never selfish about it. He learns things to help other people. Like I’ve known people who use their magic to make themselves better than everyone else, but he always uses it to make other people better.”

Caleb furrowed his brow, ever so slightly, disbelievingly. 

“And you know what,” Jester continued, facing Caleb despite still addressing Siona, “he’s making a face right now, ‘cause he always tries to talk down about himself but he’s really caring, even if he pretends like he’s not. He’s got a lot of friends who all love him and he loves them and - and with me especially, you know, well. There’s always been people in my life who try to make me happy. And like, a lot of people can make me happy some of the time, ‘cause I like being happy. And obviously, he’s one of those people. He makes me laugh, and smile, and all sorts of things.” 

The way Caleb was looking at her - tenderness undercut with so much sorrow, the look he gave her a lot when she told him he was good and important and that she and the Nein would do anything to protect him because he deserved to be safe - it made her _ache_. It made her chest clench up, and her hands shake, and all she wanted to do was put them on his face and bring it so close that he had no choice but to hear her speak and know that she meant it.

“But he … he. He’s the only one who _always_ knows when to do it. He can tell when I need someone to tell jokes with, and he tells them with me. But he also knows when I just need to be sad for a little while, and he knows how to be sad with me, and then it’s not as sad anymore, cause it’s both of us together. He’s the only one who _always_ gets it right. _That’s_ what made me fall in love with him.”

She kept her eyes locked with Caleb’s, begging him to realize Guinivere had stopped talking about four words in. The fact that he didn’t immediately pull back, and the way his upset eyebrows had started to pull back up at the center again gave her a little bit of hope he’d been listening. But he might also just be looking at her that way because that’s how any recently married Oscar would be looking at his Guin.

Turning away from him, Jester saw that Hanne had grabbed Siona’s hand while she spoke and was rubbing her thumb across it gently, while Siona let a small, genuine smile pull at her lips. Jester could’ve sworn the half-elf even gave the slightest nod of approval.

“And you?” Siona asked, piercing gaze falling on Caleb.

“She makes me want to be a better man,” he answered, needing no time at all to think. “I wake up in the morning, and I swear to myself that I’ll be a little bit better of a man than I was the day before, in hopes of one day being worthy of someone as good as her.”

“Alright then,” Siona said, both amused and pleased at the speed with which he had responded. “Good sentiment.”

Caleb merely hummed in response.

As Siona opened her mouth to ask another question, Hanne tugged at her arm. “Si, love, I think that’s Ezra over there, we really ought to go say hi, we haven’t seen him since he stopped working for Arthur.”

“Yes, I suppose we should.”

“Sorry to cut out like this, but you know, he’s an old friend of ours,” Hanne said apologetically glancing between Jester and Caleb.

“Of course, entirely understood,” Caleb returned.

“Byeeeeeeee, maybe we’ll run into you again later tonight, lovely meeting you!” Jester called, as Hanne was already pulling Siona away.

“Take care of him,” Siona said, twisting over her shoulder to point at Jester as she moved away.

Jester giggled. “For sure!”

The second they were out of earshot, Caleb let out a deep sigh. “That was … a lot.”

“Yeah, but we penis rocked it. We lie. So good.”

“We did not lie _nearly_ enough.” Caleb huffed. “Guin’s mother owns a hotel in Nicodranas? That’s too easy to track down.”

  
  
Jester waved her hand dismissively. “Oh come on, its fiii-”

  
  
Caleb glanced around, checking that no one was within earshot before continuing. “Do you remember how scared you were that someone from the Assembly would go find her after that letter, because you signed it with a name she doesn’t even go by? But you’re not worried about this?”

Jester glanced at the floor, biting at her lip. She knew he was right, and it had been stupid to bring up, but ...

  
  
“But they were just nice old ladies, though!” she protested. “They’re not gonna turn us in to Icky-thong, or go hunt down my mama themselves.”

Caleb seemed to shudder at the mention of Trent. “You don’t know that they won’t.”

“Yes, I do, Caleb. They were perfectly trustworthy.”

“I do not trust a single person in this room, and I _will_ not until we have left for the night, unscathed.”

The speed with which Caleb spoke was worrying. It was the kind of fast where his words were almost layered on top of each other, leaving his mouth without any of the normal trippings-up of a second tongue, meaning they’d already played over in his mind a million times before he said them out loud. 

Jester crossed her arms, chewed nervously on her lip, and tried to dissolve into her dress. 

Caleb began to walk again, feeling as though they’d been standing in the same place for too long, circling about the room slowly. Jester trailed behind him, a few feet away. She kept her arms wrapped about her own torso, and lifted her gaze but made no attempt to actually examine the inhabitants of the room.

“Are you mad at me?” she eventually asked, so quiet Caleb would’ve missed the words from anyone else. 

“No,” he said very plainly, coming to a halt and turning around to face her.

Jester just kicked one toe of her shoe against the marble floor. 

Caleb stepped slightly closer to Jester, who was not meeting his gaze. “I’m not mad, I am not. I am just … nervous. Perhaps too much, but -”

“No, no,” she sighed. “You’re right. We should be suspicious of everyone. I shouldn’t have said so much. Sorry.”

“It’s alright, really. I’m not actually all that worried about them myself. They seemed … very upfront.”

Jester finally made eye contact with Caleb, smiling a little bit and uncrossing her arms so that she could link one through Caleb’s. “Of course they were, I’m always right.”

He rolled his eyes, but couldn’t help a small grin pulling at the corners of his mouth too, knowing that she wasn’t upset anymore.

“Besides,” she continued, bumping her head against his arm as they picked up walking again, “they didn’t even ask any questions about us being penis magic users, or you as a student of the penis Academy, or Yussah or anything. They just asked us romance questions. Which I don’t think they would do if they were trying to do anything shady to us.”

“That is true. They asked a _lot_ of romance questions.”

“You had some pretty good answers, Caleb.” Jester prodded Caleb’s shoulder with a finger as an extremely mischevious grin crossed her face.

“Ja, well, I am … good at lying.” Caleb attempted to lean away from the pokes, mostly unsuccessful. “You, ah, you came up with some good ones too.”

“Hell yeah I did.”

“Fake kids, though? Are we going to be sticking with that all night?”

“Well, actually, I have something to tell you.” Faux nervousness filled Jester’s voice as she unlinked her arm from Caleb’s, grabbed his hand, and placed it on her belly. “Guinevere's expecting.”

Caleb’s eyes went wider than he thought possible. He was a little bit afraid he had somehow cast a fire bolt, because his palm that Jester had pressed onto her stomach was burning up, even against the cool satin. 

It was a lot, all at once. Thinking about him, and Jester, and kids, _their_ kids, that weren’t really their kids, or even real, but they were apparently going to spend the rest of the night acting as though they were real, and theirs, together, him and Jester. 

Marion was a good mother. Jester would probably be just as good to her own children, if she ever had them. She had been very good with Kiri in the time the Nein had been watching her. She had a lot of compassion in her, and so much energy, which would be useful for running around with the younger ones. She’d spoil them on pastries, though. He’d have to be sure to stock the dinners with veget-

Nope, no longer thinking about it.

“Shhh,” Jester whispered, too loud to be an actual whisper, “don’t tell Oscar, though, he doesn’t know yet.”

“Oh - ah - I - okay,” Caleb spluttered, as Jester plucked his hand off her belly and forcibly bent his arm for her to link into again. 

He cleared his throat, and she snickered a little, clearly pleased at having managed to rile him up. 

A comfortable lull soon fell between them, filled instead by the soft sounds of the musicians and the din of conversation all about.They slipped back into a matching step, moving slowly across the room as they scanned the guests for anyone else worth investigating. Surely, there would be _something_ useful in here. They just had to locate it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'd like to give a brief shoutout to author smokeandjollyranchers and artist daciafu for their gorgeous [ficlet](https://smokeandjollyranchers.tumblr.com/post/182750303902/this-is-a-little-follow-up-to-this-since-the-idea) and [art](https://daciafu.tumblr.com/post/182772723108/shes-still-laying-on-her-stomach-but-hes-sure) that inspired me in a roundabout way for that proposal in nicodranas bit!!


	3. chapter 3

After a good ten or so minutes of trailing about the outskirts of the party, trying and failing to spot anyone else who looked particularly like they might be an Assembly member or high-level Academy student to no avail, Caleb’s mental alarm clock began to tick its warning sign.

“Guin, dear, I think you might need to, ah, freshen up,” he said, nudging Jester’s side with his elbow.

Jester scoffed. “You know,  _ Oscar _ , it’s very rude to comment on your wife’s appearance like that.”

Caleb rolled his eyes. “I mean the spell,” he hissed in Jester’s ear.

“Ooooh, the  _ spell _ ,” she said, slightly louder than Caleb would have liked. She looked up at his exasperated expression before continuing, quieter, “Well how was I supposed to know you were talking about secret mission stuff, huh? You didn’t use the code word.”

“I am not going to use the code word.”

“Well if you don’t say ‘penis’, then you can’t expect me to know when you’re doing mission talk!”

“I figured you would be smart enough to  _ assume _ .”

Jester huffed, but offered no retort. 

“Really, though, we have maybe five minutes.”

“Alright, alright, I’ll start looking for a side-room.” 

Jester glanced around, searching for a hallway that wouldn’t seem too suspicious to start walking down. Across the room, behind the dance floor, two hallways peeled off on either side of a grand staircase, and some party guests had begun to filter into them as conversations drew them further from the din of the main area. She motioned Caleb towards the one on the right, and he moved with her, trying to slip out of sight without looking like they were trying to sneak around the estate. 

They pulled around the first corner, checking both ways to ensure there were no other guests caught up in conversation before they began trying door handles. About three doors down, Jester found one that had been left unlocked. She cracked it, and seeing it both lit and empty, called Caleb over. They slipped inside, taking care to shut the door with as little noise as possible, and Caleb clicked a shoddy but usable deadbolt behind him.

The room appeared to be a guest bedroom, left unlocked perhaps for some close personal friend of the hosts who intended to spend the night after the festivities had concluded. It was sparse for a rich person’s room, which meant it contained a rather large bed, desk and chair, bookshelf, dresser, closet, floor rug, and a full-size mirror in one corner, which Jester was already staring into.

“When the spell drops, don’t re-cast it right away, Caleb. I want to touch up my lipstick.”

Caleb’s head cocked in confusion. “Why do you need lipstick if I’m casting a disguise spell?”

“Becaaaause,” Jester drawled, as though this explanation should have been obvious, “we’re supposed to be at a fancy, pretty party, and wearing lipstick makes me feel fancy and pretty.”

“Oh.” Caleb paused to think. “But you’re pretty even without lipstick.” Clearly he did not think long enough, otherwise he would not have said that.

“ooOOoo, so you think I’m pretty, Caleb?” Jester cooed, batting her long, disguised eyelashes at him dramatically.

“No - well, nein - ah - well - yes, you are objectively a pretty person, Jester,” he stuttered.

“I asked if  _ you _ think I’m pretty, Caleb.” A few moments passed, with no answer. “Hm? Come on,  _ Cayleb _ , don’t make me Zone of Truth you. Yes or no, do you think I’m pretty? … Caleb?”

“I think you are incredibly pretty,” Caleb muttered, so quick and quiet that Jester could barely make it out. He was looking at the floor as he said it, and somehow, that extra shyness made Jester’s stomach flip in a way she hadn’t been expecting. She wasn’t sure what to do about it so she just stood there looking at him and not doing anything.

The disguises fell a few moments later, and upon realizing so, Jester reached into her bodice, pulling out a small tube of purplish lipstick that she had taken from her Mama’s dresser when she was about fifteen, and only ever used on the most special of occasions. She pressed the color on and rubbed her lips together, pursing them to check for any missed spots, before capping the lipstick, slipping it back between her boobs, and getting Caleb’s attention with a final smack.

“Alright, you can cast the spell now!” she called, meeting his gaze as he lifted his head from where he had been staring at his folded hands as he waited. 

He unclasped his fingers to begin tracing a symbol in the air. 

“Wait, wait, wait,” Jester interrupted. “I wanna spin around when you do it, like a fairytale transformation.”

“O-okay?” Caleb said. “It won’t affect the spell at all.”

“Great!” Jester beamed, stepping into the center of the room and beginning to turn.

Caleb began tracing the sigil yet again, focusing his attention on the figure twirling about, just a few feet in front of him. He was trying to think just about the dress, and not too much about the person in it, or how he had been calling her his wife all night. No, just the dress. Just the sleeves fluttering and skirt wrapping about her ankles, fabric pale pink and shimmery, perfectly complimenting her skin, her blue skin with freckles on it. She had done something similar in the alleyway outside the party, but she had still looked like Guiniviere then, and now she looked like Jester, the he Jester he knew and - 

She had her head tossed back and her eyes closed, and she was grinning with a pure kind of happiness Caleb had only known to come from her. The kind of happiness that wrinkled up her nose with her smile, and made her wiggle her fingers in anticipation as she stretched her arms out for balance. The kind of happiness that he couldn’t help but get lost in, because gods did it feel good, and he would gladly do nothing but stand here and soak it in. Which was a problem, because he had been in the middle of casting a spell, and now he wasn’t, and he could feel the energy dissipating from the air, spent.

“Caleb, are you casting it or what?” Jester called, stopping her spins and cracking one eye open to peer at him.

Caleb shook his head as he answered, as if just waking up from a dream. “Ja, sorry, I’m going to. I just … got distracted.”

“Well. Don’t this time,” she said, and began turning again, slightly slower as the dizziness was starting to get to her. 

Caleb traced the sigil once more, staring at just her feet and praying that he would make it to the end of the spell.

He managed to do so, feeling the energy leave his fingertips and crackle in the air for a moment before focusing towards its target and jetting off to bring Guiniviere Albrecht back into being. He traced the sigil a third time, for himself, watching as the soot stains and calluses faded from his fingers, replaced with the smooth, clean hands of a member of the Zemni upper class. 

“We should go,” he said once his own spell was complete. “The less time we spend in here, the less of a chance the actual occupants will try to come back.”

“Mhm, of course,” Jester agreed, holding out her arm for Caleb to take. “Shall we return to the event, Mr. Albrecht?”

“I guess we shall, Mrs. Albrecht.” Caleb slid one arm through Jester’s, drawing the two of them close to the door before pulling the lock open, cracking it ajar, and slipping back into the hall. 

“Fifty nine more minutes to try and find someone good,” he said as they rejoined the party. “Eyes peeled, ja?”

“Penis eyes peeled,” Jester agreed, with a curt nod to signify her dedication to focus.

  
  
  


* * *

Jester and Caleb sat on a bench, alone and sequestered off to the side of the party, scanning the room for good spy targets. 

Those two people looked kind of mean. Maybe they were _cinnamon_ , no, Cerberus, Assembly people, or maybe they were just _cinnamon_. Guests. Or what about that _pastry,_ ELF, elf lady. There weren’t a lot of elvish _pastries in Caleb’s pockets_ people here. Mostly _cinnamon_ human _pastries_ people _literally sitting in Caleb’s pockets, the one she ate a little bit ago was so good and she had barely had any of the food here and she was really hungry and Caleb’s jacket was full of these delicious cinnamon croissant-y type things and Caleb was really focused and he kept reaching up to rub his amulet and she was pretty sure he was looking for Trent and she didn’t want to bother him with something so stupid while he was actually doing what they were supposed to be doing but she also really wanted a pastry, like, really, REALLY bad, so …_

Jester leaned towards Caleb ever so slightly, trying to look as though she was peering at the far corners of the room. Her hand lifted off her lap, drifting towards Caleb with an unnoticeable slowness. She felt her nails brush against the silk of Caleb’s suit jacket, and she followed the fabric to what she was pretty sure was a pocket seam. She slipped her pinky under the flap that closed over the top of the pocket, lifting it up with a touch so gentle it might put Veth to shame.

Still not looking, she lowered her fingers in, extending them ever so slightly to feel for the pastries she had dropped in there about an hour ago. She knew they were in there, they were so close, just a hair further, she could  _ swear _ her middle finger was brushing up against a crispy edge of a baked good - 

“What,” a tired whisper came from just above her ear, “are you doing in my pocket?”

Jester turned to look at Caleb, faking shock, as if he hadn’t just caught her with her hand fully inside his jacket. She dropped the ruse as soon as she met his gaze, scandalous gasp quickly morphing into a sheepish grin.

“I wanted a cinnamon thingy,” she said, keeping her hand in his pocket. 

“You could have just asked me for one.” 

“Wellllllll, you know, you were busy, I didn’t want to bother you, and -”

“You could have just asked me for one.”

Jester’s smile faltered for just a moment at the monotone of Caleb’s voice, scared she had genuinely upset him rather than just mildly distracting him. Caleb apparently took note, silently reaching down to pull the pocket flap up off the back of Jester’s hand. He gestured loosely towards it.

“Go ahead,” he said, still scarily toneless.

Jester’s smile fell, curling into an expression of concern. She still hadn’t taken her hand out of his pocket. 

“I know you want them, just take them.”

She scrabbled with her fingers for a moment, trying to get a grip on one of the pastries. It was taking entirely too long. She felt the embarrassment leering over her shoulders as she finally snagged one and pulled her hand from his pocket in the kind of slow motion that is only caused by regret. 

Jester’s stomach felt kind of knotted, and she didn’t even  _ want _ the pastry anymore, but it had become such a big deal that it felt rude to not eat it, so she sort of nibbled on the edge as she went back to looking at the party. She tried to focus on the back corner where a handful of people had been standing for a while, but she could see Caleb moving out of the corner of her eye, his breaths restless and his hand pressing at his amulet more and more frequently.

“If you’re looking for him, I don’t think he’s here,” Jester mumbled into her half-eaten dessert.

“Mmm.”

“Like, neither of us have seen him, and this isn’t important enough of an event for him to really even bother coming anyways,” Jester tried to reassure Caleb.

“Can never be too safe,” Caleb said, every word seeming to catch in his throat before it managed to find its way out. 

“I guess,” Jester said, taking a defeated bite. Even through her worry, the cinnamon was good. She slid closer to Caleb in the silence, stopping when she reached the point where they were just close enough to wrinkle the shoulder of Caleb’s jacket and the skirt of her dress along the widest part of her hip and thigh. 

Caleb’s breath hitched again, but he made no move for the amulet this time. 

“Besides,” Jester added, tilting her head to bonk Caleb with an invisible horn to drive her next point home, “I’m still here with you. And I’ll beat that dude up with my bare hands if I have to.” She shadowboxed the air in front of her, scattering flakes of pastry across her skirt.

She felt Caleb’s side shake as he chuckled. She stayed pressed lightly up against him, to make sure that his breathing stayed calm, or at least, calmer than it had been. Reassured, she began to snack on the pastry once more.

She tried to focus back on the group in the corner, darkvision straining to make out any details about their clothes or faces. Before they left for the night, Caleb had drawn a shitty recreation of the Academy’s crest, which most current students would be wearing on their lapels. It was definitely too far to tell what the exact design was, but it looked like at least two of them were wearing some kind of pin, and they were definitely on the younger end of guests here. They all seemed to be human? But then again, so did Jester, to anyone without truesight. Hopefully no one here had - 

“I was worried about you, too.”

Jester twisted to get a glimpse at Caleb, whose words had just broken her train of thought.

“Me, and you, and us,” he continued. “Not just about  _ him _ being here, but anyone who is not a fan of us. Same as before, I don’t trust anyone here. We’ve made a fair amount of enemies. Much of Dwendal’s throne room still thinks us traitors. I worry that someone will try and find us out. Expose us.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Jester opted against reminding him that he’d forgotten to say ‘penis’. 

“The only thing between us and a jail cell is a simple disguise spell, which could easily be taken away by anyone. We know everyone here is allowed to cast. No one would stop a dispel.”

“So what if they dispel us?”

Caleb scoffed.

“No, I mean it,” Jester said, leaning further into Caleb. “Everyone being allowed to cast includes us. And we’re like, really strong. Me and Veth helped you sew the inside pockets for your spell components, you have everything you need to do your cool stuff. And I’ve got my traveller symbol, so I can do things too.” She let a little humor slip between the sincerity of her tone. “Like my  _ totally hot _ spiritual weapon. We could fuck anyone here up.”

“Hopefully we will not need to.”

“Hopefully not. But if we do, we can.” She let her head settle comfortingly on his shoulder. “I got you.”

“I would really prefer we not fight anyone in here. The necklace stops magical detection within ten feet of me. If you stay close, anyone who is looking for us should not be able to find either of us.”

“I mean, suuuure, if you want to be  _ boring. _ ”

“Jester,” he said, concern pulling at his words. 

“What?”

“Just - do not go too far from me, ja?” 

It was upsetting how desperate that plea sounded. Jester’s answer was soft and, she hoped, assuring. “I’ll stay close.” 

“Thank you.” Caleb seemed to collapse a little as he spoke. Jester couldn’t tell whether it was relief, exhaustion, or both.

If she brought up those corner people now, he would definitely just freak out again, and she wanted to give him a few moments of relative calm if she could. Maybe another dessert break, then. Keep an eye on them, make sure they don’t do anything  _ too _ suspicious, and after this next pastry is gone, she’ll bring it up. 

Picking her hand up off her lap, she began to reach for another cinnamon dessert. She had put them into both of Caleb’s side pockets, and one from each side was only fair. For like, evenness or whatever. She reached just under his shoulder blades, using the side of her hand to track the path across his back. She ignored the sound of surprise that escaped him, walking her fingers down his other side until she reached the pocket, which she slipped into. 

“Again, you could have asked me for one,” Caleb told her, a light humor underlying his tone, reassuring Jester that she’d been of some help.

“I thought you wanted me close to you?”

Jester reached her other hand around his front, slumping even more into his side to get her hands to meet. She passed the pastry gingerly from one hand to the other, and let her fingers drape back into his pocket as she began to chew. Caleb made no attempt to push her off, and she couldn’t help but grin a little, because they were technically basically snuggling on this bench.

She was going to eat this pastry  _ very _ slow.

  
  



	4. chapter 4

“I bet that one,” Jester said, pointing at a shorter man, thick-shouldered and over-dressed, with a slicked-back mullet that really did  _ not _ work for him, “is cheating on that one,” she designated the much more slender man with his arm wrapped almost disgustedly around the first, “with that one,” she pointed at a dragonborn woman, black scales matching well with the  _ extremely _ low cut silver dress she had on, who had just placed her hand on the mullet guy’s arm too high up to just be friendly.

“Oh really?” Caleb said. “I was going to guess the other way around. The skinny one looks like he can barely stand being next to the muscly one.”

“You know what, I bet it’s both.”

“Both?”

“Yes, they’re both cheating, on each other, with her, and it’s going to be SO funny when they find out,” Jester giggled.

Caleb’s eyes widened simply imagining the fallout. “It’s going to be very messy, that’s for sure.” 

He glanced about the room, looking for another interesting group to tell tales about. And also to look for anyone suspicious, but he and Jester hadn’t seen anyone yet, and even his anxious self was beginning to doubt they’d find anyone with useful information. But, as long as he had the spell slots to keep disguising him and Jester, they’d stay and search. The searching was getting to be a bit boring, though, which is why they’d taken to making up fake backstories for people they found at the party. 

“What about that man,” he said, pointing towards a skittish looking fellow eyeing up one of the food tables. He was wringing soot-stained hands over each other in a nearly animalistic fashion.

“Hmm, I think that one’s … a warlock. With a super creepy patron, just like Fjord used to have.”

“Probably a fire god instead of a water one.”

“Do you think he wakes up belching FLAMES?”

Caleb was caught off guard by the strength of his laughter, bending halfway over as it bubbled up from his gut. “Oh, for sure he does. Maybe … he is trying to turn his god good, though?”

“Aww, I like that.” Jester leaned contentedly into Caleb’s side for a second, comforted at the idea of this random man changing his god by brute force of will.

“Alright,” he said, and she could feel his voice vibrate from his ribs and into the side of her head, “you pick the next one.”

Jester begrudgingly peeled herself up to continue searching the room.

“Ooh, ooh, look over there!” she tugged on his sleeve, drawing his attention towards the dance floor, where a figure was tugging Hanne out for a waltz, while Siona leaned against a pillar with a drink and watched, very amused. 

“Oh, it’s the ladies we met earlier,” Caleb said.

“Yes but WHO is the mystery person?” Jester asked, excitement brimming in her half-whisper.

“I don’t know, I’m looking.” 

Caleb didn’t have the best vision, but he could make out from the short stature and the intricately braided hair and beard that this was definitely a dwarvish woman. Her hair was grey as well, and the quaintest glasses perched on her face. She had on a rather simple fitted suit, and seemed to be dancing the leading part.

“Oh my god, it’s a grandma threesome,” Jester breathed, watching as the dwarf tilted Hanne into a shallow, easy-on-the-joints dip.

“Mm, perhaps,” Caleb said. “She’s not wearing a ring, though, and the other two are.”

“She’s got a ring, it’s on a chain around her neck. How do you think she knows the other two, though?”

“Oh, ah, they adventure together, probably.”

“Oh really, Caleb?”

“Ja, for sure.” He nodded, committing fully to his answer for story’s sake. “The dwarf has a huge sword. She made it herself.”

“This grandma goes adventuring and makes swords?” Jester’s eyebrows rose, very intrigued by the tale Caleb seemed to be weaving.

He shrugged. “She needed a hobby later in life.”

She laughed a bit at that. “That’s so cool. I want her to be  _ my _ grandma.”

“Me too.”

“Ok, ok, new target,” Jester said, craning around the room. 

She gasped almost immediately, gaze catching on a couple in near identical outfits to her and Caleb. One woman was short, probably gnomish, with bright red braided hair, that paired well with her deep green suit. She had one arm somewhat up in the air to hold hands with another woman. The second woman had a half-shaved head and an enormous mess of curly hair on the other side, a pale pink ball gown, and more rings than Jester could count across her fingers. They sat down on a bench directly across the room from Jester and Caleb, and Jester could’ve sworn the one in the ball gown caught her looking and winked. 

“Caleb, look, they’re matching us!”

“They are, with the colors, ja.”

“Do you think they’re like, us from an alternate universe?”

“Pardon?” 

“Like you know when you look in the dodecahedron and you see like forty yous? Did you ever see a little baby gnome Caleb?”

“...No?”

“Mm, well, I still think they’re us. The green one even has red hair.”

“Well, if they’re us, what’s their story?” 

  
  
“So, I bet the one in the pink dress is really a tiefling in disguise.”

“Not very subtle with the parallels, then.”

“Shut up, Cayleb.” Jester gave him a playful shove before continuing. “And she’s super badass and she has magic and she talks to her god  _ all  _ the time. And she has so many pretty dresses. Aaaaaand she had to run away from home but it’s ok ‘cause she met a bunch of cool people when she did. And the green one is you so she’s …”

Caleb scoffed, tone suddenly darkening. “A stinky beggar on the run from assassins she used to work with?”

“Y-yeah, maybe, but …” Jester faltered, thrown and worried by Caleb’s sudden change in demeanor. “But she’s like, super duper nice and good now with a lot of friends who care about her, like, so much. And they do really good things together, you know? And - and the one in pink is really proud of her for how much she’s grown. And she hopes that she knows that. And also she smells good now.” Jester rested her cheek against his shoulder as she talked, half-burying her face in his jacket. “I think that’s what she’s like.”

“Oh.” Caleb’s voice softened again as he felt Jester’s weight press against him. His hand twitched as he considered reaching for hers, for just a second, before the idea was discarded. 

Apparently, though, without anyone holding it, her empty hand opted instead to settle on top of his thigh, and trace absent-minded patterns into his pants leg. Maybe he  _ should’ve _ held it, because that might have been easier to handle than this. 

He wasn’t going to pull away, because she seemed pretty comfortable slumped up into his side, and he didn’t want to disturb her. Also, because that couple across the room might possibly be watching them and it would be suspicious. He couldn’t start rubbing at his arms, which was his normal go-to when his brain was running 1000 feet per round, because she didn’t like it when he did that. She might grab  _ both _ his hands to stop it, which, at this point, would probably cause him to implode. He couldn’t mess with his breathing either, she’d picked up on that one earlier when trying to steal pastries. 

His anxious energy had moved into his leg of its own volition as he tried to figure out where to put it. Jester realized this before Caleb did, once the hand she had on his leg started shaking too. She gave a quick squeeze, to see if he’d notice and stop bouncing his leg and actually voice his anxieties to her. It’d worked a few times already tonight, and she thought it had done him a bit of good. 

Unfortunately, he was too busy thinking about whatever was making him bounce to begin with to notice. She also didn’t want to like, shift her position around to poke him, because this was probably the closest they’d been all evening, and thought it was kind of selfish, she didn’t particularly want to give that up, not to mention Caleb just being comfy to lean on in general. 

The great thing, though, one of the many gifts of being a tiefling, was that Jester had a tail. A tail that was currently invisible, curled up under the skirt of her gown all evening, kept close to her legs for the sake of keeping a human cover, even though she’d been dying to use it to trip people or tickle their ankles or all sorts of harmless pranks. Like, how often would she get a chance to have  _ only _ her tail invisible? 

She slid the heart-shaped tip across the floor, trying to cause as little disturbance to the pooled up fabric of her skirt as possible as she moved it out of her personal space and into Caleb’s. She positioned it as best she could near his ankle, given that it was a moving target and also below her visual range at the moment. 

She flicked the tip back and forth a few times, catching the back of his heel. No reaction. 

She tried again, this time opting for up and down swishes instead of side to side. Still nothing.

She opted for a full-on smack, though, admittedly, there was limited momentum she could build up with the weird angle she had it bent at to not make her dress levitate. His leg ceased bouncing for a moment, but before she could finish her celebratory silent cackle, it had started up again.

She gave it two more smacks in quick succession, hoping the double-move would cause a little more pause.

“Are you doing that?” 

Jester couldn’t see Caleb’s face, but she could tell that it was pointed down at her as he asked the question. His leg had, in fact, come to still and stayed that way. So, success.

“Doing what?” 

“Touching my leg.”

“Oh,” Jester said, mischievous instinct bubbling up after having been fairly suppressed for a night of seeming dignified up to this point, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

As she spoke, she managed to slip her tail into the hem of his sock and snap it against his leg. 

He let out a pointed noise of surprise. “I think, perhaps, you do.”

“NooOOoo!” she insisted, tugging his sock up and down as fast as she possibly could. 

“You know, I rather doubt that,” he said, trying desperately to suppress the laughs from his voice. 

“You  _ shouldn’t _ doubt it,” she said, dragging his sock down to his ankle and attempting to tickle the now-bare skin, “because I’m literally not even doing anything.”

Suddenly, her tail lost contact as Caleb picked the leg up, and crossed it over his other leg, to keep the opening in his pants leg significantly out of Jester’s range. 

Jester grumbled audibly.

Caleb prodded her shoulder with one finger. “I thought you weren’t doing anything, what’s got you upset, hm?”

“I wasn’t, and … I’m … not!” she said, stretching the words out to give herself time to reach her tail as far as possible, and get inside his other sock. 

“St-stop it!” he said, unable to stop the giggles from escaping. 

“Stop wha - hey! That’s cheating!”

Caleb had slid his leg slightly to the right, forcing Jester’s tail to slip out of the sock as he surpassed the possible length her tail could stretch. She squirmed over his lap, letting her torso slide in front of his and her hands brace against the bench as she tried to reconfigure her body to get slightly more range. 

She was - nearly there - her tail was - straining - she could feel - a bit - of leg - she thinks - and - 

She felt her face squish into cold stone as Caleb pushed himself fully out from under her. She looked up just in time to see him tuck his legs to his chest and spin about on the bench to face the opposite direction. She was about to do a spin maneuver of her own, so she could kick him in the shoulder, when she became acutely aware of the fact that he was no longer laughing. She glanced over her shoulder as inconspicuously as she could, and saw what had caused such a quick shift in demeanor.

Leaning against a pillar not fifteen feet from them was the group of possible Soltryce kids she had seen earlier. At this close of a distance, she could tell that they were all around 20 in age, close to graduating if not recently graduated, and the pins on their lapels were very clearly the symbol of the Academy Caleb had detailed for her earlier. Worst of all, one of them had their sleeves pulled up to reveal the same black tattoo maze they’d seen on another one of Trent’s recent graduates. 

“Hey,” she said, rising to her feet and offering a hand to Caleb, “I’m thirsty, let’s go get something from the drinks table, okay?”

He nodded silently, taking the hand and letting her pull him across the room, away from the group of students.

“Ohhhhhhh, schiesse,” Caleb hissed as soon as they were out of earshot.

  
  
“Shh, shh, no, it’s okay,” Jester began.

“Balls and eater, this is not good.”

“No, really, Caleb, I penis promise you, it’s fine,” Jester said, grabbing both of Caleb’s hands in an attempt to keep him focused on her, “I noticed them over an hour ago and -”

Caleb’s eyes doubled in size. “An hour! Why didn’t you tell me?”   


“Becauuuuse, I knew you would get super freaked out, exactly like this, but I’ve been penis watching them, and all they’ve done is -”

“I am not freaking out.”

“Yes, you are,” Jester said as gently as she could manage, “but I’m telling you, it’s  _ fine _ , because all they’ve done is avoid the dance floor and squeeze a bunch of olives into a glass of punch and dare each other to drink it.”

Caleb pried his hands out of Jester’s and began rubbing at his arms, previous denial of it be damned. “They are very dangerous people.”

Jester let out a distressed sigh. “They are  _ bored _ at a party that’s  _ way _ too fancy for them.”

“One of them has the arms.” Caleb tugged at the fabric on his jacket sleeves for emphasis.

“I … did notice that, and I agree that it’s a little bit concerning, but like I said, they haven’t made any moves all night.”

“He would not let one of them just attend a party like this willy nilly, there’s a reason he sent one of his own here.”

“Maybe, or maybe they’re here for another reason.”

“Like what?”

“Um. Well. Like.”

  
  
“Exactly. It’s suspicious.”

“Alright, so we’ll keep an extra careful eye the rest of the night, okay? But you know, if the worst we have to face is a 20 year old with olive juice burps, I think we can take him.” She gave Caleb a playful shove, which turned into a comforting pat as she realized he was still too tense to even roll with the punch. “I promise. We’ll be okay.”

“No, I - I know. But, you know how I get.” He laughed dryly. “Always worrying.”

Jester frowned, but couldn’t think of a good response. It  _ was _ worrying, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to convince him otherwise, no matter how much she wanted him to have an easy night. She just reached down and gave one of his hands another prolonged squeeze before letting go. At least it was just students here tonight, she thought, and not an actual assembly member. If it had been the latter, she had no idea what Caleb might’ve done.

  
  
  


* * *

“Penispenispenispenispenispenis-” Jester said, smacking Caleb’s arm just as quickly as she was spitting out words, “-penispenispenispenispenispenispenispe-”

“I  _ know _ , I also heard them announce her,” he hissed back, eyes locked on a woman across the ballroom who had just strolled through the door, well past fashionably late. 

“-nispenispenispenispenispen _ Is that really her?" _

"Certainly appears to be."

"Oh my god."

"Ja, ‘oh my god’ is right."

"We need to penis talk to her."

"We  _ need _ to stop staring before she gets suspicious."

The woman's gaze had lingered on their area of the room for just a moment too long to be coincidence, and Caleb pushed at Jester subtly to direct the two of them towards a more shadowed area of the ballroom. 

Once they had situated themselves in the very corners of her line of sight, Jester grabbed Caleb by the shoulders, in a backwards sort of attempt to ground herself, or possibly him. Probably both of them. Things had just gotten a lot more dangerous, and Caleb’s wide eyes and frantic breathing made it clear that he had come to a similar conclusion.

“She’s supposed to be in Zadash with the fake beacon my dad helped us plant, why is she penis here?” Jester hissed, trying to catch another glimpse of her over Caleb’s shoulder.

“I don’t know, possibly - stop looking, we don’t want her noticing us - possibly it means that they know the beacon is fake. Or they no longer need one for their experiments.” Caleb plucked Jester’s hands off his jacket, trying to keep calm, though his hands were shaking. 

He began to lead the two of them on a wide circle about the outer rim of the party, keeping close to the edges, but still part of the crowd. Jester was still stealing looks over his shoulder at the woman. They spoke in bursts, making sure their conversations were out of earshot of any of the other guests they passed as they walked the perimeter. 

“What if the Assembly’s onto us? What if they’re all coming back for defense?” Jester’s voice pitched into the high sort of whimper that she only reached when really afraid.

“That would be bad.” Caleb was using that very flat, anxiety-masking tone again. “She is looking at me again, let’s go.”

He pulled backwards, fading into the shadows at the very edges of the room, trailing back towards the hallway he and Jester had snuck down to change their disguise spells twice now. 

“Do you want to leave?” Jester asked, words slipping out as soon as they had slipped into their own personal corner. “We can leave, right now, if you’re worried, we don’t have to stay here.”

“I - no. No, we need to stay. We have gotten very little information so far, I do not want this to have been a waste.”

“Do you think she knows it’s you?”

“I don’t know.”

“And that doesn’t scare you?”

“It scares me a great deal. But it also scares me not knowing if the Cerberus have been tipped off that we’re back and coming for them.”

“And how are you going to find that out, huh?”

“I don’t  _ know _ .”

“Caleb, really, we can just go, it’s okay if we don’t find out anything tonight, this was a long shot anyway, you don’t have to - stop pushing!” Jester started moving out of the corner, walking a few feet in front of Caleb who was tensely ushering her.

“Sorry, sorry.” Caleb rubbed at his arms nervously. “The Academy kids seemed to have noticed us back there. Did not want to look suspicious.”

Jester walked in mildly annoyed silence for a few moments before responding, “Alright, fine, that’s fine, that’s smart, I get it. But, really though, we can just g … Oh.”

Jester trailed off as she caught sight of the woman, gaze locked towards them almost like a magnet. She looked completely past Jester, focused solely on Caleb. Jester was about ready to reach for the symbol of the traveler she had hidden inside her skirt, when she noticed the  _ way _ the woman was looking at Caleb.

She stared with lidded eyes, looking down her nose with eyebrows slightly arched. Her lips seemed to be pursed. Her shoulders were postured in a way to show off the very low cut of her dress. She reached for a cupcake on a passing waiter’s tray with one arm and picked it up with a quick hand. She drew a finger through the frosting and then brought it to her mouth, licking it clean with a deliberately slow precision. She winked.

“Oh my GOD!” she whisper-yelled. “Caleb she hasn’t been looking ‘cause she knows you, she’s been looking cause she wants to  _ bone _ .”

“That is … quite the development, if true,” he said back, sounding fairly disbelieving.

“Trust me, if anyone knows what a horny person looks like, it would be me, okay, and that was extremely horny.” Jester slowed a little to make talking to Caleb easier, but opted to stay in front of him rather than linking arms again. “This is actually really great, though. You might be able to get good information out of her like you wanted to if you went and talked to her alone.”

“Alone?”

“Well, yeah, horny people tell all kinds of secrets, but she won’t be horny if I’m there with you.”

“What about the amulet? If she’s here, who knows who else may be watching. You’re a target if we get too far apart.”

“I thought your main goal here was information. I’m telling you how to get it, Caleb.”

“It is, but - “

“Then go  _ get  _ it.” Jester held up a finger to halt the beginning of his protests. “She’s by the food table right now, that’s not a weird place to hang out. I’ll circle around and come up behind her while you talk so I’m still in its radius. I’ll only be outside of it for like two minutes.”

Caleb huffed, very frustrated, but not actively fighting her.

“It’s a good plan and you know it.”

“I just worry about being found out.”

“Okay, well, if someone is trying to scry on us and they find out and tell her and things get violent, I’ll be chilling just like, right there to Dimension Door us out. It’ll be  _ fine _ .”

“I don’t like this.”

“Our only other option is to walk around in circles on the outside of this party for the rest of the night to avoid her, which I’m pretty sure you also aren’t going to like, so just go over there already.” 

“Jester - “

“Gooooooo! I’ll be right behind you, I promise.”

Caleb looked at her for one more tense moment, the concern on his face apparent even through the illusion. He let out one of those shaky breaths that sound like he’s about to say something, but he just keeps sighing instead. Then he shifted his walking a bit to peel away from Jester, curving towards the woman in the center of the room. 

She followed him intently, eyes never having left him from earlier. A grin curled across her lips as she realized he was moving towards her. She set down the cupcake on the table next to her, freeing her hand to hold out in greeting. Caleb approached and grabbed it, letting his grip linger as he spoke. 

“Lady DeRogna, what an absolute pleasure it is to find you in attendance here tonight.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fun fact!! every party guest that jester and caleb made up fake backstories for are me and my friend's real d&d characters, and those are their real backstories!!
> 
> the first three are Nissy (mine), Zier (my friend Morgan's), and Nakoria (my friend Lex's) aka the Bastard Trio from a Wildemount mini-campaign.
> 
> then there's Kenny (Morgan's again) who is from Humblewoods and is a raccoon in the game.
> 
> then there was Gildy (mine) from a West Marches-style open form campaign where nearly everyone made elderly characters without communicating with each other beforehand.
> 
> last are Craving and Stella (both mine), Craving is from Curse of Strahd and Stella is her backstory girlfriend :)
> 
> shameless plug but if you want to know more about them you can check out my d&d/oc blog ([glasyasbutch](https://glasyasbutch.tumblr.com)), morgan's ([overplannedbutunnamednpc](https://overplannedbutunnamednpc.tumblr.com)), and lex's ([toomanyorphans](https://toomanyorphans.tumblr.com)) on tumblr!!


	5. chapter 5

Jester stood by the dessert table, arms crossed as she scanned over the various cakes and pastries for the fourth time. She grabbed one, to look more purposeful, and took a bite. She was almost grimacing too hard to chew.

See, this plan had seemed really great five minutes ago, when all she was thinking about was an opportunity for information, but now that her only job was to sit here and listen to Caleb spout sickeningly sweet nothings at a tried and true bitch, she was liking the plan a  _ lot _ less. 

She had mostly tuned it out when he promised Vess that he was “only here with his sister-in-law, she’s truly nothing to worry about”, but whatever, the marriage thing was a sham to begin with, she couldn’t  _ really _ get upset about it. She had taken a sip of some fruity drink she’d poured and focused very, very hard on the act of swallowing, and that’s  _ it _ . 

She had rolled her eyes quite a bit when he had started schmoozing compliments about Vess’s equally skilled mind and tongue, because they were  _ so  _ thickly laid and not at all his style. She had just picked up a cinnamon pastry and shoved it in her mouth. They tasted better when they came from Caleb’s pocket.

She had told herself that it  _ probably _ didn’t mean anything that he was complimenting the short brown hair, just like Astrid wore hers apparently, not at all like Jester wore hers. She had crushed a corner of a pastry between her fingers and repeated her own sentiment back to herself. 

This excursion was for information. This was a good way to get information. This entire night was about acting, which is what he was doing right now, and even if he wasn’t, she really had no reason to get jealous over a crush she hadn’t even admitted to. It’s fine. It’s fine! She’s doing fine. 

Jester smashed the half-eaten pastry in her fist when she looked over just in time to see Caleb reach for one of Vess’s arms, gently push back the sleeve and run careful fingers over a mess of shimmery tattoos. She explained that they were finely crafted in residuum, an experimental new method of enhancing arcane power, sort of like that old coastal gem tattooing method, and if she said anything after that, Jester couldn’t hear it over the grinding of her teeth. 

Her face immediately softened as Caleb’s stare travelled over Vess’s shoulder and met hers, momentary panic visible in his eyes. 

She’d  _ love _ to be right there, able to grab the hands she couldn’t see but knew were fiddling with his cufflinks because they couldn’t get past the jacket sleeves to rub at his scars. She’d love to pluck them away with her own hands, and lace the two together and squeeze a little bit, so he’d have something to hold onto besides memories and phantom pains.

But she wasn’t. She was ten stupid feet away, pretending to not be there at all, so she just squished another stupid pastry between her palms instead.

Vess’s sultry reply of, “Perhaps you’ll get a better look at them later,” drew Caleb’s attention away from Jester, and left her gaze alone to wander back to the pastry crumbs now tumbling out of her hand and onto her shoes.

She didn’t want to keep looking at them, since she could tell her expressions were getting harder to control, but staring at the floor was definitely suspicious, so she stared off into a random corner and kept her ear vaguely on Caleb and DeRogna’s conversation. As luck would have it, she found herself staring at the group of Academy students she’d clocked as slightly suspicious before.

They were milling about near one of the stained glass windows, the faint lighting filtering in casting deep shadows across all of their faces. They were clearly talking, one of them had very animated hand motions, but she couldn’t make out any of the words. 

The one who wasn’t waving hands around had their arms crossed, almost threateningly. Jester looked at that one a bit closer, trying to gauge whose side they were on. That question was easily answered when the arms uncrossed and reached out to grab the student getting hand-motioned at by the shirt. 

Jester looked back at the dessert table for a few seconds, so as not to be blatantly staring, and by the time she looked back, tensions seemed to have faded already. Probably just teenager stuff, she figured. They always had too many emotions in their tiny bodies. But still worth keeping tabs on, given that they were people of mission import. 

Caleb and Vess were talking in Zemnian now, and since she couldn’t understand it, she had to look back at them to make sure things weren’t going horribly wrong. Vess had a hand on his cheek, so, by certain measures, they were.

She really didn’t know why she was so worked up now, of all times. It wasn’t the first time she’d been around someone flirting with Caleb, or around Caleb flirting with someone. Like, when she sat in on that dunemancy lesson with Essek, she found it entertaining more than anything. And she knew, logically, that he could choose whoever he wanted to do romantic and/or sexy things with it, and in the abstract sense, she didn’t care who he picked as long as he was happy.

But. You know. If a guy spends the whole night with his arm around you, laughing at all your shitty jokes, and dropping pet names into conversations, and telling you how beautiful you are, and calling you his wife even if it’s supposed to just be acting, you might get a little bit jealous when all of a sudden that affection that you thought was going to be just yours for a few hours is now suddenly on someone who sucks major butt.

She’s not going to do anything about it, though. She knows her jealous streak runs deep and dark and she’s not particularly proud of it. Caleb’s staying composed, and she’s going to too. She’s going to do her job, and just stay here, and not interfere, and - 

“You know, I actually have a guest chamber prepared for me in the house, in case I choose to spend the night. I’m not proposing anything, of course, but if you happen to find yourself down that back right hallway in about an hour, I’d be willing to let a handsome face in the door.”

_ Vess has a room in the back hallway where she and Caleb were sneaking to refresh their disguise spells, and she just invited him down there to go fuck, and it might be the room they’ve already been in, and he just asked her for the exact number, so he can go sleep with her, in maybe probably the same room she did her lipstick and he called her pretty in, and what, is Jester just going to have to sit outside the door and listen the whole time so she’s not too far away from his stupid necklace, oh my gods, she won’t be able to make it, she’ll blow it for the both of them if she has to do that, she’s real sorry Caleb, but -  _

“Oh my gosh, Oscar, I have been looking aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall over for you!” Jester squealed, rushing up from behind Vess and making sure to shoulder-check her as she moved towards Caleb.

“G-guin, I, oh, where did you come from?” Caleb spluttered. 

“Perhaps I’ll leave you two to catch up.” DeRogna gave Caleb a final smile as she turned on her heel and wandered off into the party.

“Bye!” Jester called with altogether too much glee, waving at DeRogn’as back as she pulled Caleb towards in the exact opposite direction.

He let himself get tugged rather easily, but as they slowed to a stop, his brow furrowed and he hissed, “What was that for?”

“Sorry, I, well -” 

“I was getting somewhere with her! I was going to get into her room! She could have actual important evidence in there!”

“I, so, I, um, I thought she had dropped something in your drink.”

“We didn’t have drinks.”

“I just got worried about her being here and knowing about us?”

“ _ You _ were the one that talked  _ me _ into getting information from her.”

“Yeah. Sorry.” Jester wished she had a better response than that, but she really didn’t, unless she was going to confess to a whole lot of things all at once. 

They sat in silence for an uncomfortable span of seconds before she piped back up. “So that creepy Academy student group, I caught them fighting with each other.”

Caleb sighed and buried his face in his hands, pressing them hard against his eyes for a while before looking back up. “O-kay,” he said, still a bit overly measured. “We should probably keep an eye on that, at least.”

“Totally, for sure. They’re over this way.” She pointed towards the same corner of the room she last saw them lurking in.

Caleb held his arm out in the same fashion he had all night, only a little bit exasperated and Jester slipped her own arm through it, attaching herself to him with renewed vigor. It was only a little bit undignified.

“Yeah, they’re not actually doing it anymore, I don’t think, but we should probably tail them for a little bit, you know, just keep watching them. Just in case.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


“Penispenispenispenispenis,” Jester hissed, tugging on Caleb’s shoulder to get his attention as well as bring his ear closer to her mouth. “One of the shady Academy people is dragging another one somewhere  _ super _ shady. That seems like something we should spy on.”

Caleb let out a strained hum of agreement. “Ja, it does. But they are going to be extra suspicious if they are indeed doing shady things. We have to be very sneaky.”

“Oh, Caleb. No. We’re going to be super duper obvious.” 

Jester grabbed Caleb’s upper arms and twisted his body to fully face hers. She draped her arms around his neck and wiggled her shoulders as she pushed her face incredibly close to Caleb’s, eyes lidded and smile thieving. 

An idea had just entered Jester’s mind, definitely due to the lingering jealousy she was harboring, and almost certainly something she’d think twice about trying if she wasn’t so keyed up and impulsive from hours of sneaking around.

“Us married couples just  _ love _ to go sneak off into dark places to do  _ things _ … “

She pulled away from Caleb, who was now painfully aware of how warm Jester’s body was and of the almost territorial path that her hands were making across his collar bones and down his chest until they reached his own hands and gripped them with a teasingly light touch. 

“... And if we go to do those  _ thiiiiings _ in the same hallway as the Academy people and hear everything they’re saying, well then good for us.”

“Oh.” Then, after a few seconds pause, “Ok.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t do anything you’re not comfortable with,” Jester added, noticing the deer-in-the-headlights expression that had overtaken Caleb’s face as she dragged him across the dance floor after the targets of their espionage. “Just follow my lead. Trust me, Caleb. I’m really good at fake making out with people.”

As she finished her thought, Jester’s voice dropped to a whisper. They had reached the archway the two students had passed through about thirty seconds before. She lead him into the shadows of the left side hallway, taking care not to let her heels clack too loudly against the floor as they slipped closer to the two voices they could hear talking distantly. 

“What the hell was DeRogna talking to you about?”

“None of your business. Don’t ask me about it, unless you want me asking about whatever the fuck Ikithon has you doing out in the woods.”

Caleb’s muscles tensed at the mention of Trent, forcing a harried breath out of his lungs. She tried to wrap her arms around him comfortingly as she pulled both their bodies against the wall, far enough away that the figures were barely visible but passably audible if they both focused. Her back was pressed against the stone, cold seeping into her exposed shoulder blades. One arm was hooked around Caleb’s side so her palm could spread across his back and her other hand rested against his jaw. She could feel his beard even through the clean-shaven illusion of his disguise spell. She quite liked the feeling. 

Caleb quickly fell into position around her, one hand sliding to rest on her waist and the other pressed to the wall beside Jester’s head which he used to catch himself as she yanked him towards her. His face was mere inches from hers, eyes wide with surprise. Jester’s face turned left, focusing on the two mages to ensure they were still in their conversation. Seeing them engaged, she turned back, ready to wait with Caleb in their damningly romantic position until they were spotted and presumed non-threatening. 

Except, when she got back to looking at Caleb, he was too close to see. Because he was close enough to  _ feel _ . His lips, specifically, were what Jester was feeling. On her lips. 

She hadn’t been expecting to go this far, she thought Caleb would have felt weird about it. But he clearly didn’t, and she thought kissing was fun, or at least  _ seemed _ like it would be fun, seeing as she hadn’t done a lot of it. So she kissed him back. 

Caleb pulled her closer by her waist as he kissed her for a second time, and Jester smiled a little thinking about how she worried she was too forward with Caleb by suggesting this plan. 

She felt Caleb match her smile in the third kiss. She loved Caleb’s smiles. She began to think that she loved them even more this way, right up against her own, but she cut herself off when she remembered she was supposed to be eavesdropping.

“ - to Eiselcross, didn’t she? Thought she could find another beacon up there, right? Go rogue?”

“No, no! She’s not doing anything, I swear.”

“Don’t play dumb with me, I’ve seen the way she acts in Ikithon’s experiment chambers.”

For the first time that night, Caleb did not flinch at the mention of Trent’s name. He just kept kissing Jester, for the somethingth time, she had lost track already. That was a good thing, she thought. Caleb could stand to be distracted for a while. So she slipped her hand from his jaw to the back of his head, guiding him even closer to her, and pressed her chest against his.

Then Jester made the mistake of opening her eyes for a second, and she saw a stranger’s face in front of her. Strange black hair, slicked and tied neatly back. Strange eyebrows, thin and high, like they had never been furrowed in sadness or deep concentration. Strange slender nose and strange beardless jaw and strange clean cheeks. Not Caleb. Just a cover, a facade, a fake face for a fake evening. 

Nothing tonight was real. The kisses certainly weren’t.

Jester shouldn’t have been surprised, really. None of the kisses she had ever had were real. Ones from her Mama don’t count ‘cause it’s her Mama and they were usually on the forehead or cheek anyways. And the ones from Nugget don’t count ‘cause he’s a dog. The one from Fjord didn’t count ‘cause she was drowning and he just did it to try and rile her up anyway. 

Of course Caleb’s kisses didn’t count either, they were just to eavesdrop on the people at the party. Which, Jester noted, she hadn’t been doing, because she kept getting distracted by how good this felt, how comfortable she was with Caleb’s hand on her hip and his lips on her lips, and how she wanted to do this again and again, even after the night was over. How badly she wanted to do this again as many times as she could, how awfully she wanted Caleb to want that too. To want  _ her _ too. 

But it didn’t matter what Jester wanted. 

This night wasn’t about her, it was about the Mighty Nein, the re-brewing of war in the Empire, and information. It was about sneaking and lying, and whatever was happening here was just part of the fakeness. It might feel good but it would mean nothing once the night was over. Just like what her Mama did, Jester thought dryly. As much as Marion had tried to give Jester a life different to her own, Jester had still ended up just like her. 

Except she hadn’t, because when she woke up the next morning, her Mama wouldn’t still be thinking about the other person. Her Mama wouldn’t still have shadows of their hands, rough with callouses and burn scars, all across her body, tender little ghosts to remind her of what she had done with them. 

Her Mama wouldn’t get to look at them, hunched over a book at a table in an inn, mumbling to himself as he absorbed information into his seemingly endless mind. Her Mama wouldn’t get to see the way he smiled when he came across doodles in the pages, and hear how he said “Did you do this?” but it was never said in a mean way. 

Her Mama wouldn’t get to hold onto him while he choked on his memories, hear the sorrow in his voice when he said “I am glad you see good in me” and feel the pain that she felt knowing that it had been so long since he had seen good in himself. Her Mama wouldn’t be holding his hand as he walked through a city that haunted him.

Her Mama wouldn’t stay awake at night thinking about him. Her Mama wouldn’t want to hold him and be close to him and kiss him like this over and over. Her Mama wouldn’t want to stay around for the day he could truly call himself happy.

Her Mama wouldn’t be in love with him.

Her Mama would be like Caleb was going to be, in five minutes when they got noticed. Wholly indifferent. Her Mama wouldn’t care if she never got to kiss him like this again.

Jester felt a lump rising in her throat and she pressed forward against Caleb’s lips, as if her mouth could run away from the sadness bubbling up from her stomach. She kissed him faster, kissed him harder, knotting her hand in his hair. It still felt like his hair through the illusion, thick and messy and beautiful, and if she kept her eyes squeezed shut she could pretend there was no illusion at all, and then maybe no tears would come out. 

_ He’s always trying to make me happy, _ she had told Hanne not too long ago.  _ He’s the only one who always gets it right _ . And by the gods, in that moment, he was getting it so fucking right. She could feel his breath on her cheeks, hot and quick as he kept kissing her as hard as she kissed him, a little harder even, one hand running down her side and the other up her neck into her hair, moving with urgency but still so carefully gentle that it almost,  _ almost _ felt like he really might love her. 

That was the worst part of all of this. 

If Caleb’s hands had been heavy against her skin, or if his tongue had not been so eager, or if his hips had not pushed forwards against hers, then she might have been able to ignore her feelings and simply get through the deception. But he was touching her with a tender reverence, the exact way Jester imagined lovers would touch, and she couldn’t stop wondering if this would be the only shot she ever had at knowing how it felt to be loved back.

Jester nearly broke apart right then. Instead, she dug her nails into Caleb’s back and wrapped one of her legs around his, trying to get him so close that he could hold her together. 

It wasn’t working. 

Of  _ course _ it wasn’t working, because she  _ knew _ that he was just acting and he  _ didn’t _ actually love her back and he  _ never  _ would and  _ no one _ ever would and she would  _ never _ get a kiss that counted and she just  _ had _ to be ok with that but she  _ wasn’t _ ok with that she  _ couldn’t _ be  _ she couldn’t be she -  _

She pulled him in for a particularly deep kiss, which she held for seconds without even breathing because that was the only way she could keep from sobbing.

Eventually, she broke away from him, hands still pulling the rest of him as close as she could get him and eyes still squeezed shut, but the sadness came out anyways. Tears were brimming, and she had to keep him from seeing how upset she was. Partly because he was already sad and worried enough tonight and she was supposed to be happy to balance him out. And partly because he would want to know the  _ reason _ for why she was sad, and she had never been very good at lying to him. So she took the hand that was still in his hair and tugged his head down to her neck, away from her now tear-stained cheeks, and prayed to the Traveller that the Academy people would notice them soon.

Jester figured her tactic had worked, because Caleb did not stop kissing her, instead peppering her jaw with little pecks and she hated that she still loved how it felt, even with sorrow pooling beneath her skin. She let her head tilt back against the wall as he began to suck on her neck and she gritted her teeth while she tried not to think about how the hickeys would fade just like her disguise and just like everything they pretended to feel about each other for the night. 

“Hey!” a voice shouted from down the hall, and Jester felt both relief and disappointment rip through her at once. She pushed Caleb away, finally loosing her fist from his hair, and jerking out of his reach more forcefully than she had intended. Caleb opened his eyes and met Jester’s through a film of her tears.

He instinctively stepped back, pulling his hands away from her, and cursing himself for whatever he had done to hurt her. He opened his mouth to apologize, but in that same instant he remembered where they were and what their goal was and who had just addressed them from down the hall. He turned to face the two other figures instead.

“Oh, ah, we are very sorry! We, ah, clearly thought we were alone. We don’t mean to disturb you. We’ll just be going now,” Caleb stammered, mind torn between keeping their cover and the overwhelming desire to make sure Jester was okay. He turned back to her, hand reaching out to grip her shoulder before he realized that might not be a good idea given the circumstances.

It didn’t matter. By the time Caleb had finished speaking to the Academy people in the hallway, Jester’s eyes were dry and her face had returned to its usually peppy state as she called down the hall, “Don’t mind us! We’re just having some fun tonight! We’re gonna go do it somewhere else though so don’t come follow us unless you’re into that!”

Caleb cursed himself for not addressing Jester before she had the chance to shove her sadness down into the hidden place in her soul that even he often couldn’t locate. He had already been the cause of so much of her grief, he had no right to add any more. 

As Jester finished speaking to the Academy folks, she slipped her hand into Caleb’s with a giggle and lead him back down the hallway and into the light of the ballroom. She walked quickly, with a bounce in her step, her side pressed into his like it had been all evening. Nothing had changed in her bubbly, excited demeanor. This troubled him far more than her brief tears, because it meant that some part of Jester was trying desperately to pretend the last ten or so minutes had never happened. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


They emerged back into the broad expanse of the party, the light and music a slight affront to Caleb’s senses. He and Jester drifted to the side, out of the way of the majority of guests, eventually coming to rest alongside one of the drinks tables. They stared at the array of beverages in silence, instead of each other, for an agonizing minute before Caleb sighed, and turned to Jester.

“Jester, I am so sorry for what happened in there. I got carried away with the cover and I -”

“You forgot to say penis,” Jester interjected, her voice distressingly monotonous.

“I - I don’t care!” Caleb sputtered. “I don’t care right now.”

Jester placed a steadying hand on his forearm. “Caleb, calm down. You don’t need to worry. I don’t think suspect us.”

“That’s not what I am upset about,” he hissed. “You’re hurt. I did something to hurt you, and that is not okay, and I need to apologize for it.”

“Caleb, you don’t -”

“Yes, I do.” He tried to shift around and get his face into Jester’s line of sight, with little luck. “I know you like to pretend like you never get sad, but I saw your tears in there. I know you are upset, and I know it is my fault, and I need to apologize to you. I went too far, I was selfish, and I did not think about how you were feeling. I am sorry, Jester. I truly am. I don’t ever wish to hurt you like that again.”

“I’m not hurt.”

“Then why were you crying?”

“I wasn’t crying.”

“I am a liar by trade. I know one when I see one.”

“I wasn’t crying because you went too far.”

“Jester, please.”

Even though she was still avoiding his gaze, Jester knew exactly what Caleb’s face looked like as he said that. His eyebrows were drawn together, nearly touching, throwing dark shadows over his eyes, which were looking up at her despite the rest of his face tilting down. They were full of anguish and worry, a perfect complement for the dark gauntness of his expression. It was an expression Jester was more than familiar with. It came out whenever Caleb was being particularly hard on himself. 

Normally, that look filled Jester with the urge to lean forwards and brush a tender hand across his face, in hopes of pushing some of the stress away. Now, though, she pulled back from him. If she had to look at the concern he was putting on for her, she didn’t trust herself not to slip into the fantasy where he liked her back, and then from there into sadness. 

“That’s not a lie!” Jester said, wishing desperately for the conversation to be over so she could stop thinking about just how much of a lie it wasn’t. 

“Then why were you crying?”

Jester did not answer, rubbing at her arms uncomfortably. 

“Jester,” Caleb pleaded, “answer me. You can’t keep all of your sadness hidden forever.”

Jester scoffed at that before continuing, “It really wasn’t your fault, Caleb. It’s just ... I was …” She trailed off, knowing he would see through any fake reason she came up with. 

“Fine. You don’t have to tell me why. But please, if I ever do something to hurt you, I want you to say something. I … I care about you, and I care if you are happy or not.”

“Of course I will, Caleb,” Jester smiled, a real smile this time. “But you’re actually really nice, even though you like to call yourself bad all the time, and I don’t think you could hurt me even if you tried. I’m pretty tough.” She flexed her arms to accentuate her point, an almost comical contrast to the daintiness of her satin dress.

Caleb chuckled, even against his best attempts to maintain the sincere mood. Jester had a way of doing that to him, making him laugh in situations that called for the opposite.

“That you are,” he said.

He sighed deeply, adjusting his posture and facing to be out of Jester’s space. Glancing back over at the now-quiet and still human form of Jester, Caleb added another goal to his list for the night: make this up to her. 

Absently, he reached for one of the glasses of wine which were arranged on the table, but Jester smacked his wrist before he could grab it. 

“Nuh uh,” Jester scolded. “We still have a lot of spying to do, because I kind of forgot to listen to the people in the hallway, and you can’t be drunk for that. Plus we’ve barely danced at all this evening and I know you know how to dance, so we’re going to go do some. But I’ve already danced with you while you’re shit-faced and it just made you sad, so you’ve got to do it sober this time.”

Caleb started slightly at Jester’s suggestion of a dance, but he really was in no position to deny her anything she asked for right now, so he offered her his hand as he bowed slightly.

“Well then, Madam Albrecht, may I have this dance?”

  
  



	6. chapter 6

The music was pleasantly slow, a soft and lilting melody led by strings that Caleb was sure Jester would beg Yasha to learn on her harp tomorrow morning. It was the sort of song that the hired bands would play when they could tell the furious dancers needed a break to grab refreshments, letting the dance floor fill up with couples who wanted an excuse to be close to each other. And then also the two of them, who were a distinct category from the previous one, despite the fact that they had just been kissing in a dark hallway not ten minutes ago. 

Jester dragged them to an unoccupied corner of the dance floor, already timing her steps to match the pattern of the music, causing Caleb to bump into her several times, because he did not walk in threes. When she found a spot she liked, she whipped around to face him, pulled their already held hands out to one side, plucked his free one up between her fingers and dropped it onto her shoulder, and then settled her own against his hip.

“You know, this way means you’re leading,” Caleb said, a slight tease to his voice.

“It’s easier to put my hand on your waist, you’re taller than me,” Jester protested. 

Caleb shrugged, but made no attempt to change. “You remember how to do this?”

“Uh, _ ja _ !” Jester said, and proceeded to dance very off-beat. 

Caleb let himself get tugged along at first, but soon began to push the timing ever so slightly to catch them up to the music. They kept the steps simple; back, back, side, forward, forward, side. Jester’s tongue stuck out ever so slightly as she focused on the steps, and as she seemed to grow more comfortable with the movement, Caleb started turning them in a very lazy circle. It was nice, at least on his end, to let the repetitiveness burrow into his muscles as they swayed to the waltz that was playing. It freed up his brain to think. And there were all sorts of things to think about. 

The fact that Trent had sent one of his Vollstrecker to this party. The presence of Lady DeRogna. The way Jester was singing along to the music very faintly, he suspected she didn’t even know she was doing it. The conflict between those students likely to blow up before the night was over. The tap of Jester’s thumb against his own as some sort of metronome to help her keep up with the pattern of the steps. The bump of Jester’s chest against his as she messed it up. The soft giggle and bright smile she let out when it happened. The flash of sadness that followed shortly after.

“You’re pretty good at this,” he said, violently aware that the point of this dance was to distract her. He hoped talking would help.

“Yeah, well, it’s a lot easier to follow along when you aren’t super drunk and tripping over your feet all the time.” She would’ve given his shin a nudge with her foot to make sure he could tell she was just ribbing, but she didn’t have a foot to spare, so she bonked the side of her head against his arm instead.

Caleb gave a slightly embarrassed hum of acknowledgement.

“You know,” she said, focusing back on the rhythm of the waltz, “I tried to teach myself to dance once.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, when I was like fifteen or something. Mama had been letting me out of the Chateau for errands a bit more, and I was thinking, you know, if she got invited to a party, she might go if I went with her, and then I could get all dressed up and fancy.”

As she spoke, she took the hand off Caleb’s hip to pull at her extremely fancy skirt for emphasis. She was very pretty in it, he thought for the millionth time that night, with no reduction in the amount his heart jumped in his chest when he realized just how very pretty she was.

“And you know, I had all these ideas about some handsome boy who would be there, and he’d ask me to dance, and we’d spend the whole night together -”

Caleb was fairly sure that as she dropped her skirt and brought her hand back to his hip, she tugged on it very lightly to get him to stand a little closer. She had her head tilted back a bit as she talked, staring at the ceiling in hopes it would make the memories come back easier. Since she wasn’t looking, and it was a crowded dance floor, and they really couldn’t bump into anyone or risk ruining their illusions, he stepped towards her. To make sure he could steer her away from other couples if they got too near. No other reasons.

“ - and I didn’t want to make a  _ fool  _ of myself, so I tried to learn how. I’d make the Traveller practice with me once in a while but, you know, usually it was just me alone in my room, with no partner.” 

A tense lull fell over the conversation. Jester’s grip on Caleb’s hand loosened for a moment. She shook her head, as if to redirect her own mind, and squeezed his fingers even tighter.

“You’re a pretty good partner to learn on though, Caleb.”

“Oh, ah. Thank you. Though I must admit that I am pretty rusty after all these years.”

“Where  _ did  _ you learn to dance?”

“It was part of my lessons when I was in school. Part of being a proper wizard is going to fancy parties, it seems, so they had us all learn.”

“Did they pair you up with  _ Astrid _ ?” she said, emphasizing the name with a surprising amount of malice.

“Th - ah -”

“I mean, you called me her. Last time we danced.”

“I … did, ja.”

“So I just figured.”

Jester’s voice was very quickly getting back to that unsettling monotone that meant she was hiding how upset she was. This is exactly what he was supposed to be preventing. He was supposed to be keeping her mind off all the things he’d done to hurt her, tonight or otherwise, and he was doing an unsurprisingly, but distressingly, miserable job at it. 

He’d been enough of a burden with the way he’d spiraled every other conversation they’d had here, and then he had gone and kissed her in the hallway, because he was selfish before anything else, and now he had another heaping armful to add to the pile of debts he’d been building up since the day he first met her. He certainly couldn’t make himself a good man, and at this point in the night it didn’t seem like he could make himself a particularly useful spy either. But, gods be damned, if Caleb could wring one useful thing out of the evening, he could cheer Jester up.

“Make sure no one trips on your penis disguised tail.”

Jester practically jumped, breaking out of the waltz to wave her hands, and by extension, one of Caleb’s, around wildly. “You said the penis code word!

“I have no idea what you’re penis talking about,” Caleb said, moving his hand from Jester’s shoulder to her back to guide her back into dancing.

“You’re saying it, Caleb! You’re using the penis code word!”

“I don’t think I penis am.” Caleb very pointedly refused to meet her gaze, in that way people do when they’re trying to get caught in a lie.

She stuck her tongue out at him. “YES you penis ARE!” 

“No penis way,” he said. 

“Penis way!” she yelled back.

At this point, Jester had quit dancing in favor of bobbing her head around in order to catch Caleb’s eye. Caleb, in turn, was still pretending to ignore Jester, but gave up trying to do an actual waltz step and just settled for swaying back and forth, sort of in time to the music. Unsatisfied with his avoidance, Jester reached a hand up to grab Caleb by the chin and force him to look at her. 

“Penis?” Caleb gasped, feigning shock at the new development.

“Penis!” Jester responded, squeezing his face with triumphant glee.

“Penis?!” Caleb said again, because Jester was having a lot of fun with this.

“Penis!!” Jester said back, slightly louder and mangled a little by laughter.

They went back and forth for a good minute, slowly upping the volume and the giggling as they barely managed to sway from left to right from how hard their sides were shaking.

They were in the center of the dance floor, in full candlelight, failing to dance on beat with any of the couples around them, laughing so hard they were snorting and shouting obscenities to boot. If Caleb had bothered to look around, he surely would’ve felt many pairs of eyes on them. He might have felt a rock form up in his throat, and wrenched his hand from Jester’s to grab at his necklace for comfort, and let the loud fun trail off into hushed anxiety.

He didn’t bother to look up, though. Because he was looking at Jester, and absolutely no force on earth would be enough to get him to look away. She was beautiful, so beautiful, and Caleb was drinking in every last image he could get of her. Her gorgeous pink dress swishing around both their feet, her hair curled and pinned so carefully to hang behind her head, her earrings glimmering in the light, her shoulders bouncing up and down as she laughed. 

And even though their disguises held, he could imagine the blue there instead of tan brown, the freckles dusting towards her collar bones, the pointed teeth that would peek out when she grinned her widest, the purple glint in the eyes she had squeezed nearly closed from how big her smile was. He loved that smile more than he could begin to quantify, and despite every time this evening where he was convinced he ought to run for the doors and never look back, at this exact moment, the only thing he was worried about was if that smile could get any bigger.

“Do you penis know what’s even penis funnier than yelling penis?” Caleb said, leaning down towards Jester with utter mischief in his voice.

“Penis nothing?” she said, daring him to prove her wrong.

Caleb grinned. He cleared his throat. He pulled his hand off Jester’s back and cupped it around his mouth. He glanced back down at her face, to make sure she was paying attention. 

“Yelling  **PUSSY** !”

The excited cackle Jester let out was nearly enough to distract him from the tapping at his shoulder that followed immediately after.

Almost.

“Excuse me, sir,” he heard as he turned to face a guard in ceremonial armor, “but some of the guests are finding your, uh … game … rather disruptive, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

Both Jester and Caleb stared at him in dead silence for a moment, still frozen in position, like cats that had gotten caught midway through pushing something off a table. 

“So, uh, if you’ll, uh, follow me.” The guard gestured towards the doors, almost nervously. Apparently they didn’t have much practice in kicking people out of high society functions for yelling penis too much.

Jester looked up at Caleb for guidance, hand drifting ever so slightly towards the part of her skirt where her symbol of the Traveller was hidden. Caleb shook his head briefly. It was more dangerous than it was worth to make more of a fuss than they already had. Jester took the hint, turning the movement into a fluffing of her dress, before linking her hand around Caleb’s arm for one last, brief, walk as the Albrechts. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


It was very dark outside, much darker than it had been when they had walked into the party. The few hours that they had spent inside had seen the sky from the first tints of sunset orange to deep blue speckled with the first signs of starlight. A slight breeze blew past, rustling the pristinely trimmed hedges lining the front walkway. Jester shivered. 

“Well, that did not go as expected,” Caleb said, quiet voice dissipating in the night air.

Jester let out a solitary hollow laugh. “Nope.”

“Nope,” Caleb echoed.

They had been standing there in the middle of the entry walk for a minute already, and were going to be standing there for several minutes more, because moving would admit to leaving, and leaving would admit to failing, and neither of them particularly wanted to admit to that.

“Should we move?” Jester asked eventually. “It feel like it looks weird if we just stand here.”

“Probably. But I don’t really want to go home just yet.”

“Neither do I. Beau’ll never let us hear the end of how bad we fucked up.” 

Jester’s head physically dropped with her second comment. She was not easy to embarrass, but she had to admit, 90% of what she’d done that evening could not be defined as subtle information gathering by any person on the planet.

Caleb simply sighed in agreement. “I remember seeing a garden as we were walking up. Perhaps we can go sit there a while?”

“Oh, let’s! A moonlight garden sounds SO pretty.”

“Sure, just one - second -” Caleb muttered, before extending and summoning four balls of light in the air. “There. It’s that way.”

As he spoke, the balls dashed away from them, stationing themselves like walkway lights about three feet off the ground in a path towards what Jester could just make out with her darkvision to be a small hedge garden off to the side of the house. She started walking, with Caleb shortly on her heels. As they moved past each ball, it floated up to circle their heads instead. 

Getting closer, Jester could make out a clearing in the center of the hedges, with a little plot of grass to sit on, as well as a bench. She stepped carefully on the path, bunching up her skirt in her hands so it wouldn’t snag on any stray branches. Once she reached the bench, she tossed it out in front of her as she sat down to keep it from crumpling beneath her knees, and felt Caleb brush it out of the way as he took a seat next to her.

The garden was, in fact, very pretty. The little grass plot was lined with flowers at the sides, a menagerie purples and yellows and whites. The combination of the moons and Caleb’s dancing light bathed the whole area in a pale, almost ethereal glow. As they sat, the sounds of crickets accompanied the very faintly audible music pouring from the ballroom. Another breeze came by to rustle the leaves. Jester shivered.

“Here,” she heard Caleb say, before she could register the feeling of him moving at her side. 

He was holding out his suit jacket, folded loosely over one arm. Jester started to open her mouth in protest, but he reached over and dropped it onto her lap.

“I’m used to these Zemnian nights. I don’t mind the wind. You take it, you’re cold.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

She’d never had a boy give her his coat before, she thought, as she picked it up off her lap and wrapped it around her shoulders like a blanket. She also hadn’t kissed a boy in a dark hallway before, or tried to spy on someone dangerous enough to kill her in an instant, or been forcibly removed from a party by guards. A lot of firsts tonight.

She sighed. It wasn’t helping anything to sit here in silence. They’d have to go home in about an hour or so anyway, when the party officially ended, and they’d have to talk about what the hell had happened, and it wouldn’t do them any good to not have discussed it literally at all.

“Hey Caleb?” she said to the hedges instead of his face. “I’m sorry.”

“What for?”

“For getting us kicked out and for ruining our chances at getting anything useful tonight.”

“What do you mean, Jester, I’m the one who yelled ‘pussy’ at the top of my lungs.”

Jester turned to face him then, and giggled, very slightly. “Yeah, well, you were only doing it to cheer me up, and also I yelled ‘penis’ a lot before you did that, and also I busted in on you with DeRogna which was probably our best shot at anything. So, sorry.”

Caleb shook his head. “Nothing to apologize for, really. Anyone would have done the same.”

“Anyone? You think Fjord would’ve said penis at you so many times all the old people got angry?”

“Well, okay. Maybe not Fjord. Or Caduceus. But anyone else.”

“Can I tell you something, though, Caleb?” Jester whispered, leaning over to rest her chin on Caleb’s shoulder in prime secret-telling position. “I don’t really regret it.”

“Me neither,” Caleb whispered back. “It was pretty fun.”

“Yeah.” She turned her head, settling her cheek against Caleb as she stared back out at the hedges again. After a moment, she piped up again. “And hey Caleb?”

“What?”

“I’m sorry I got mean about Astrid.”

“Oh. That’s alright.”

“I didn’t mean it.”

“I know.” He cleared his throat after a moment of heavy quiet. “I’m sorry you didn’t get to finish your dance.”

“That’s two now that you owe me.” Jester gave him two teasing pokes in the arm.

“Would you like to finish it? Now, I mean.”

She picked her head up off Caleb’s shoulder, cocking it slightly as she looked at him.

“We have space in the garden,” he said, gesturing out towards the small patch of grass, “and we can hear the music a little bit. And there’s no one around to get angry if one of us starts shouting out sexy body parts again.”

“Okay,” she said, and as he stood and held out a hand to help her up, she felt her stomach begin to flip flop a little, in the way it had only really done before when they were alone fixing their disguises.

Caleb pulled her towards the center of the grass, gesturing with one hand to pull the dancing lights with them, and leave them bobbing in a slow circle around them. He whispered a word under his breath, and slowly they shifted from his standard amber glow to a paler, dusty rose sort of light.

“It matches your dress,” he explained.

Jester couldn’t help but smile as she stepped into Caleb’s grip, his hand slipping behind her shoulder blades as her hand snaked around his waist. 

“After you,” she said.

With a slight tug from Caleb, they began to dance again. The music coming from the house set a mood, but wasn’t quite loud enough to make out a beat, so Caleb took to mumbling a steady  _ One two three, One two three _ under his breath. Jester followed along as best she could, turning in slow circles in the moonlight. The ground was a little uneven under her feet, and the dancing lights were turning the opposite way as them, and Caleb even lifted his hand to let her do a spin or two, but none of those fully explained the dizzy feeling she was getting. 

They were  _ so close _ , closer than they’d danced in Hupperdook, and closer than they’d danced inside the house. Her head was nearly pressed against his chest, and she was sure if she leaned that last little bit in, she’d be able to feel his chest rumbling as he counted steps. Her dress was sleeveless and she’d left his coat sitting on the bench, so she was admittedly a little chilly, but that certainly wasn’t the reason her back was tingling a little bit where he had his arm wrapped under her shoulder blades, or why her face felt much warmer than it usually did when she thought about where exactly she was. She craned her head back, unable to stop herself from staring up at him. 

She was met with too slick black hair, a too thin nose, and too high eyebrows. She felt her smile falter for the first time since she’d left the bench.

“Hey Caleb?”

“Yes, Jester?”

“Can you … can you drop the disguises?” She asked the question so soft, she wasn’t sure it actually left her mouth at all. “I don’t want to dance with Oscar, I want to dance with you. With Caleb.”

“Ja, sure,” he answered, somehow even softer. He lifted his hand off her back and traced a small sigil in the air, and then she was staring up at the real Caleb again.

The right bumpy nose, the right thick eyebrows, the right color eyes and hair, though the latter was a bit more tousled and pulled out of the ponytail than the illusion had been. His beard was back, which Jester was particularly glad of, she’d come to like it a lot more, recently. And there was something dark smudged on the side of his face, near his mouth. 

“You’ve got something,” she muttered, and reached up a hand to rub at it. She brushed her thumb against his face, and faltered enough to stop waltzing once she realized it was her lipstick. 

“Oh,” Caleb said at about the same, reaching a tentative hand towards Jester’s neck. His fingertips lingered on a spot just below her jawline, and though he wasn’t pressing hard enough to really feel, she was sure he had found the hickeys he’d left. 

She let out a nervous chuckle, since she didn’t know what else to do. 

He let his hand fall as soon as she did that, and tried to look down, sideways, anywhere that wasn’t directly at her. He had little luck, however, since she kept her hand on his face and used it to tug him back to her, much gentler than she had during their earlier dance.

“Caleb,” she whispered, something almost like wonder in her voice as her thumb trailed over the corner of his mouth.

“Jester,” he said, something almost like a warning in his as he reached up to pluck her hand oh so gently away.

He was trying so hard to deny Jester like he knew he should. But he was staring right at her. At everything he’d use to define the word beautiful. At the woman he’d do just about anything for, who deserved everything the world could offer her. At Jester, wonderful Jester Lavorre, with whom an evening of fake marriage and a few kisses was far beyond what he had a right to share, even though he selfishly wanted much, much more.

It was that selfishness that stopped him from reaching up to remove the second hand as she unclasped it from his and placed it against his other cheek. 

And that let her run this one down his jawline, to cup his chin, and drag at his lower lip.

And that didn’t say “no” when she whispered “Can I?”

And that bent down to kiss her back almost before she had started kissing him. 

After that, it stopped being selfishness, because it can’t truly be considered selfish to take something freely given, and even he had to admit that the ferocity with which Jester was kissing him, as though she didn’t know how to do anything else, was pretty freely given.

His hands found their way up around her cheeks and a little bit into her hair, needing something to hold onto to make sure this was real. If it let him make sure Jester’s lips stayed as close to his as possible, that was an added bonus. 

She responded with one hand curled around the back of his neck and the other balled up in his shirt, almost possessively. She kissed him again, or maybe he kissed her, it was pretty much the same thing at this point, and wanting to get even closer, she wrapped one leg around him, then another. 

Unfortunately, wizards aren’t usually known for their superhuman balance, and having the weight of an entire tiefling and ballgown suddenly thrown about his waist sent Caleb staggering backwards into one of the hedges. 

Equally unfortunately, crashing into a bush was enough to get Jester to stop kissing him, instead pulling back enough to stare breathless and giddy into his face. She pressed her forehead up against his, unable to stop laughing. All the joy was just bubbling out her mouth like water on too high a flame.

“Jester,” Caleb said, gingerly brushing a loose hair out of her face. He lingered behind her ear, fingertips shaking slightly as his brain tried to match up months of certainty that this could never happen with the tactile confirmation that it just had. 

“Caleb,” Jester said back, hands grabbing at his cheeks over and over, in what seemed like a similar sort of reckoning.

“Jester -” Caleb said again, and realized he didn’t know what to say other than her name. 

She kissed him again, which saved him the trouble of figuring it out. 

Caleb would have gladly stayed here for the rest of time, underneath Jester and the stars, floating in the thrall of being loved back. 

The bush, however, was not nearly as glad, and he could feel the slow snap of twigs beneath his back as gravity began to become a concern again.

“I hate - to ask -” he said in the spaces between kisses, “but could we - maybe - get out - of the - hedge?”

“Oh.” Jester’s eyes went wide, seeming to process for the first time where they’d ended up. “Shit, uh, yeah, hold on.”

Jester half-crawled, half-slid off his body, awkwardly trying to keep her skirt from tearing on the branches. Once she was safely down on the ground, she reached out a hand and yanked Caleb to his feet. 

Once she’d gotten him up, her gaze fell to his knuckles. She gently brushed a thumb over them, saying nothing, but drawing in every couple breaths sharp, like she was about to start talking.

He squeezed her hand a little, and simply waited for her to be ready to speak.

“You want to know why I was crying earlier?” she eventually asked. 

He gave an affirming hum.

She let out a dry laugh, and turned her gaze back up to him. “It was ‘cause I was worried you didn’t like me.”

“Oh,” Caleb said, taking her other hand up. “Oh, no. No, oh, no, I. I -”

“Shh.” Jester pressed two quick kisses, one to each cheek, to stop his rambling. “I know. I’m secretly in love with you too.”

“Jester, I … Gods.” He still couldn’t manage to get many words out, though a million were racing through his mind.

She seemed to notice, and shifted her hands to lace her fingers with his reassuringly. “We can  _ actually _ talk about this later, okay? I promise. But right now, just kiss me a little bit more. And then we should probably get out of here, because that party’s not going to go forever.”

“Ja, okay,” Caleb nodded. “I can do that.”

He traced something in the air and the dancing lights dimmed to a sexier level. Jester tossed her head back to laugh, and by the time she’d brought it back, he’d already stretched down to very eagerly take her up on this deal.


	7. epilogue

“Ay, you’re back! How’d it go?” Fjord called from their shared inn room as Caleb and Jester creaked the door open.

“What’d you learn?” Beau added, looking up from her notebook. “Anything useful? 

“Eh, sort of?” Jester responded.

“We did not get very much direct information, but ah,” Caleb said, futzing with his ponytail for the twenty second time to make sure it wasn’t mussed anymore, “we managed to gather a little bit second hand.”

“DeRogna and Icky-thon seem to be more at odds than we thought,” Jester continued. “He thinks she wants to take all the beacon thingies for herself, and  _ she _ thinks  _ he _ is trying to undermine whatever weird thing she’s doing up North that she offered us on the boat that one time.”

“Might be something to exploit there, especially if we get caught,” said Caleb.

The rest of the room agreed with nods and hums.

“Anything else?” Fjord asked.

“No?” Jester said, less convincingly than either her or Caleb would have liked.

“What’s on your neck?” Yasha said, pointing at Jester’s jawline, where she had forgotten to cast a Healing Word before walking in the room. She let out half a gasp, before realizing how much more incriminating that would be.

“Are those HICKIES?” screeched Veth, crawling over the table to check.

“No!” Jester yelled back.

“Yes, they definitely are,” Beau said, all-too-knowing smile on her face. 

“They’re NOT!” Jester clapped a hand to her neck in a feeble attempt to stop the drama by hiding the cause.

“What’s wrong Caleb?” Fjord said, gesturing at Caleb’s tell-tale wringing hands.

“Nothing,” Caleb lied.

“You know, I wasn’t going to say anything, but the energy coming off these two when they got back was really weird,” Caduceus added. 

The room exploded in various screams, points, and questions as the Nein realized, one by one the implication of Cad’s statement. Caleb simply turned and walked out of the room.

Jester’s gaze was torn, whipping back and forth between the door Caleb had just left through, and her still-rioting friends. Beau broke through the noise, walking up to pat Jester on the shoulder.

“Go find him, Jes, it’s fine. I mean, we’re still gonna tease you mercilessly about it. But, you know, good nature and all that shit. We’re happy for you.”

Jester flashed her a nervous thumbs up before bolting for the door. As it swung slowly shut behind her, she heard one last sentence come from Veth.

  
“I  _ told _ you all the fake married thing would work.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so very, very much for reading, and i really hope you enjoyed!!!
> 
> if you're so inclined, please leave a kudos or comment, and you're welcome to come hit me up at my tumblr [cadykeus-clay](cadkyeus-clay.tumblr.com) as well! <3


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